Parisa's Story
by HouseOf13lack
Summary: This is the story of childhood friends Parisa and John when they were young. Self discovery, a human threat, and finally, their parting. Is friendship love, or love friendship? The two children find an answer.  Read Halo Evolutions' story 'Palace Hotel'
1. Prologue

Disclaimer: Halo belongs to Bungie and Bungie alone. Not mine, not yours, not anyone person's.

However, I _am_ at liberty to twist my own verbal putty into all things Halo now and then, so please enjoy my putty crafting (without the runic enchantments we see so much when writing goes backwards in time).

**Prologue**

**1840 Hours, October 20, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

**Sol System. New Mombasa, Kenya, on Earth.**

"So tell me, Chief, who exactly is this _Parisa_?" Cortana intoned in John's helmet as she mulled over the name. Had she heard this name before? A search of her conversation archives came up blank, but her thought processes told her that it had come up before.

John was silent; he had left the Pelican's constant droning of its engines fill up the lapse in conversation. When he failed to answer, Cortana buzzed into his ears again.

"Let me hazard a guess. A childhood friend?" It was rhetoric. Though she had not said a word about it, she'd listened intently to the Chief's conversations. In fact, there really wasn't much room for guessing, especially when his life had been documented thoroughly since he was conscripted at the age of six. All relations had been marked; the only relations not marked down on a soldier's profile in the UNSC database were friends. Sure, there were records of teammates new and old, commanding officers past and present, even covert ops hit lists. Who else could Cortana not have recognized other than John's 'friends' from his pitifully short childhood?

John finally answered softly, "Affirmative." He said no more. Cortana was stung by his sudden distance. Well, John wasn't exactly the chatty kind, but he had never hidden anything from her. Had three years of working together so intimately on the battlefield not at least equaled to a measly friendship formed decades back? He _had_ saved this Parisa's life once, though. Cortana's logic and emotional processes flared as they worked together to form cohesive thoughts. Then again, the Chief had saved her own artificial life more times than she would care to count, and countless others in the process.

Cortana gave an impudent "hmph." She could guess, from the one single meeting, that this Parisa meant more than _just_ a friend to John. His heart had practically skipped a beat when he recognized her. It was definitely not something that could happen often, not when he thoroughly blew up covenant, flood and forerunner constructs alike without so much as batting an eyelid.

Cortana settled back into the ship's mainframe systems once they had returned to the _In Amber Clad_. Cortana sorely wished to ask the Master Chief more, but for now, getting the _In Amber Clad _running at full speed and staying alive was more important. If she had processed the Commander's orders correctly, this ship had a ride to hitch.

* * *

For all that Cortana knew about the Chief, she still had not had the opportunity to pry into his distant, short-lived memories of his childhood. It was the one place John still held dear onto, hidden deep inside. It was a form of encouragement to him. They were not stim-packs to be used in the heat of battle, but were more of a remedy to the age old defect of human beings: doubt. Even the Master Chief could not squelch the last dredges of doubt resiliently clinging on to him.

Every time it seemed that he had gotten over it, something would strike him again at the same spot. First was the lost of Sam. Then right after that, he had lost Kurt as well. His squad was lost one by one to him, Fred, Kelly, every last one of the few he truly cared about picked off one by one. It felt as much as an open wound then as it did now. The little scrap of knowledge that someone closer to home was still out there gave him comfort.

But not much. He dearly wanted Parisa to be somewhere safe. Being in the UNSC was bad enough; being in New Mombasa was even worse. He could only hope that she had been evac-ed off the African continent. If not, well... everyone's safety was what he was fighting for, wasn't it. He pictured her faint, quivering smile one last time, before pushing it deep into what was left of his human heart.


	2. The Boy

**Section I**

**[Edited Oct 16 2012: Added content at the end, fixed minor flow issues]**

**Chapter 1**

**January Eight, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Juan quarter, Burdock street #307.**

The boy had moved into the Juan quarter only a day ago, but he'd already ventured from one end to the other, scouted all possible hidey-holes and scoured all instances of cheap food. He'd located and memorised which blocks were allocated to what, be it study blocks, social blocks or residential blocks, before scooting home to mark them down on his personally modeled holomap. Or so the boy had told Parisa, who was now facing away from her and sitting cross-legged in her house tinkering with one of her puzzle games.

Parisa eyed him as he frowned, replacing this puzzle piece with that. She made up her mind to put his credibility to the test and said, "Well, why don't you show me what you've got."

Parisa stood up quickly and strode into her room and was out of sight. She appeared a moment later, a bulky holo-projector cradled in her small arms. She hefted it onto the coffee table with a soft huff. Caught off guard by her impervious suddenness, the boy stared blankly at the projector – but only for an indiscernible moment. He was on his feet again, emptying his pockets and rummaging through his little horde of booty for his holomap's data chip, which was supposedly at hand.

His loot was surprising, even for a boy. Parisa had snot-nosed cousins who had sweets kept in their pockets for an insurmountable number of days, one who always had a ball to kick around, and a good number who had nothing but their god forsaken pair of dirt-caked trousers. But this boy was different. It seemed much more appropriate to call him 'lad'. He was not 'child', and not 'kid' either. It was the intensity of his gaze that drew Parisa in, like how bright light forced you to look, yet making you turn away once again when it shone too bright.

The boy sifted through his multitude of pocket possessions before he came to lay his hand on a small, cubic casing. His fingers scrambled for the catch, and eventually pried open the tiny cube. He flipped it over to empty its contents. Parisa expected a few outdated 'wired' data chips, and could not help but blink incredulously when nine crystalline data cubes rolled out into the boy's palm. A quick check, and he identified the cube containing the holomap. He slotted it deftly into the open holo-projector terminal, and it burst into a complex holographic map of the Juan quarter. The undiluted three-dimensional view of the city blocks sputtered slightly as the holo-projector tried to cope with the myriad of immaterial architecture. Symbols and annotations lay above the map, gathered like dark copses of clouds preparing to convulse in lighting and thunder. Parisa was compelled to squint at the ant-sized words on an enlarged advertisement billboard. It read: _Triphomatic shampoo for all hair types; now with a light cherry blossom scent._

Parisa could not help but wonder whether or not the billboard was a there by coincidence – she used the exact same shampoo – _with_ the cherry blossom fragrance.

She glanced up at the boy, eyes still blurred and watery from the long minute whereby she had stared unblinking at the holomap in awed silence. She did not see the slightest hint of a smirk on his lips, nor did his eyes betray the slightest hint of an "I told you so" look. _If he were hiding it_, Parisa thought, _he hid it well_.

The boy opened his mouth to say something, but shut it again immediately.

"Please do tell me what you are thinking..." Parisa tried her best to mimic her father in being a gracious host, but trailed off as the boy's name slipped from her mind.

The boy paused for a moment before starting slowly, "Well, I was wondering. Since you have already seen this map, maybe you would like to see the rest?"

"The rest of what?" Parisa frowned. _What else could he have up his sleeve?_

"The rest of my maps, of course. What did you have in mind?" the boy asked, a sly grin spreading on his face as Parisa blushed defiantly.

"Nothing! Just show them to me." Still chortling to himself, the boy went to pick out a few more data cubes from the case. "And I'm not easily impressed a second time, mind you!" Parisa added to him for good measure.

But she _was_ impressed. The maps were laid out to her one by one, each unique in its own right. An especially gray map-scene she realized as Sydney on Earth. Her father had been there once on official military business and decided to take her along. Not that the trip was eventful, but visiting Earth was not something that many people from the Outer colonies did. Her flight down had her gawking at the great expanse of sandy land that numerous vast military complexes and tall buildings were built upon. Eridanus II had then become a much smaller place all so suddenly.

She could not remember Sydney details-wise, but observing the map certainly gave her a peculiar sense of thrill that she had felt when she first landed on Earth.

Parisa nodded her sense of approval, but realised that the boy had left her side, and was now seated on the sofa, trying again to best her puzzle. He was completely absorbed in it. She was about to peek on his progress when she heard the soft whine of her mother's car returning. The engine quietened and Parisa heard the car door close.

It seemed that the boy had realised it too, and was already in the midst of packing up. He gently rolled his data cubes back into the case and stuffed it in his pocket along with his other trinkets. He then immediately hauled the holo-projector off back into her room, with Parisa trailing behind to make sure he did not touch anything else.

Annoyed by the boy's imprudence, she wanted to object his uninvited entrance into a girl's room, but held her tongue. She was more worried about her mother finding a complete stranger in the house, even if it were only a boy who was probably younger than her. The boy was already clambering up to a window, but Parisa stopped him. "So, what's your name? You have not _introduced_ yourself properly, as my mother would say, and that's rude. I will forgive you for entering my room _and _house without my consent if you tell me your name..." She waited expectantly for an answer, curious to know who this dazzling boy was. The boy hopped off the window frame but did not answer. He stood eye to eye with Parisa in her room for a long moment, bathed in the setting sun's warm orange-tinted light streaming in from the window, until it made her cheeks flush red from a mix of impatience and embarrassment.

He stepped forward. Parisa, still standing rooted to the ground, watched him, bewildered, as he pecked her lightly on the cheek. Even though Parisa was a full one and a half inches taller than the boy, it still felt as though she was the younger one in this encounter.

"It's John. Parisa, I-" John, however, was cut short by the arrival of Parisa's mother. Turning slightly red himself, John stopped mid-sentence and turned towards the window, but thought better of it and brushed past Parisa's mother towards the door, and left as speedily as he had came.

Mother waited for the door to slam, signalling John's departure, before folding her arms and raising an eyebrow at Parisa.

"Well, I certainly hope that you introduced yourself well to our new neighbour. Maybe you would like to tell Mom more about him?" Mother broke into a smile and gestured Parisa over to the kitchen where she had put the buy-home dinner. Parisa sighed a silent sigh of relief. She was glad that she had caught John's first name, at least, else she would be in a difficult spot when her mother questions her about her first meeting with the new neighbour. _Mother is only so particular,_ Parisa could not help ruminating on this fact, _probably because of grandma._ Parisa remembered her grandmother dictating in archaic Japanese: Your first greeting may as well be your last. Thus Mother's need for such formality on these issues.

* * *

Parisa took her dinner quickly and headed to her room. While passing the living room, she saw her puzzle lying on the sofa. She went over to pick it up and turned it on to make sure it had not suffered any damage from a boy's rough handling. It had been manually turned off from the back switch. Parisa deduced the fact that boys could never take care of things as well as she did. The screen lit up, and firecrakers burst from the sides. The words "Congratulations on your new highscore!" danced around the screen for a few seconds before disappearing and revealing the hall of fame. Parisa blinked twice before registering that all her best timings had been replaced by John's – and in all categories. _Luck?_ Parisa wondered aloud, still stunned. She drifted back to her room, calculating how the impossible odds and skill by which John had come by were indeed possible.

_But wait. _Parisa could tell the scores had been replaced, but that was because her name was there in place of the normal "P.H." that she used to initial her entries. _No wonder I feel so stung. Using my own name to beat my highscores, huh._

_But did I ever tell him my name? _Parisa could not once remember exposing her name to this entity called John.

However, she did not feel any unhappiness about this discrepancy. She was actually happy that the boy knew her name, even if probably only her first. It made her feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.

The feeling lasted a whole week.


	3. Birthday Party

**[Edited Oct 16 2012: Note edited, main text edited briefly to clear inconsistencies with prologue and with Uncle Hayato] **

Hi guys, chap 2's out. Read and comment! Oh, and if you have a challenge or would like a collaboration, feel free to let me know. I'd want to improve myself as much as you do. Thanks!

A small note before we continue: The many advances in the human race (i.e. Better minds, more socially inclined societies and more independence and maturity) coupled with now faster-growing human bodies (the result of 500 years of advanced-society-pitfalls-of-technology-and-medicine and all that scientific bull) and brain (as I have mentioned before. Well, Anakin could/would have been younger, but oh well), have had human children in the 26th century winding up looking ten to twelve at the age of our seven. Their social maturity (not intelligence and what these guys know, mind you, there's a large difference) still lags a few years behind their mental ageing process as there's a life experience gap to fill. Yet, though their faces may look older (part physical and part mental ageing here, but not the full parts of either), and in fact have their bodies mature faster, their body _size_ still grows the same _rate _as they would have as children now, at the head of the 21st century. It's like an older boy in a smaller body which would have been qualified to be the older boy's body if the body had the age to it, just that this boy would continue growing in size, just not physical maturity, in the remaining years of his childhood. For example, a kid at eight or nine may already be in the midst of breaking his voice, but is still about the size of a nine year old. His body has matured, but it still needs time to grow in mass, so though pubertal changes would have been completed by the age of 14 or so, their bodies need time to gain mass, and grow to an adult's height. This is staggered compared to their physical maturity, though still slightly quicker than kids now. Tis' complicated, I know, but just try to take this as my convenient excuse for making conversations in this series more believable. If you don't but it though, I shall simply leave you to wither in your misery of missing my offer (and sale! You will never get such a good price anywhere else!) Either way, do read on and give comment! -Your loving writer/editor/publisher.

**Chapter 2**

**January seventeenth, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Elysium City Primary Education Facility (ECPEF) No. 119.**

"Good morning Mr Halls," the chorused greeting rang loudly in Parisa's ears.

"Yes, good morning to you all too. I hope you lot have enjoyed your weekend?" the young teacher asked as he slotted his data tablet into the teacher's desk. He beamed at the students, confirming everyone's presence. He moved to turn the screen on. With a flick of a sidelined switch, the screenboard winked once before displaying the lone word 'Indices'.

"Indices. The index, exponent, power; call it what you may. Any questions before we start?"

Ralph raised his hand up high.

"Yes, Ralph," Mr Halls said as he gestured for him to stand and speak.

"I was wondering, sir, what the use of Mathematics was." Mr Halls frowned and rubbed his chin, pondering over the question.

"Ralph, the answer, to cut it short, would be that the subject of Mathematics would help you _greatly_ in your future endeavours. That's all there is to it." Mr Halls smiled. Parisa could not suppress the giggling that had spread across the classroom.

"Let's start properly now. Well, allow me to give you an example. If three to the power of _a _equals to 1, three to the power of _b_ equals to ten, and three to the power of _c_ equals to hundred, find the value of three to the power of nine _a_ minus four _b_ times twenty-seven to the power of _c_." Mr Halls called up the question from the desk to the screenboard. A few formulas accompanied it on the right, where they settled.

"Work these out, using the helping hints on the right. I shall go through it in a minute." Mr Halls weaved through the desk-bound children, picking out those who needed help.

Parisa had already finished the question. _Really, Mr Halls has been pampering us. I would have been able to do this last year,_ she thought as she mused over her handwriting. Parisa sat at the most secluded corner of the small classroom, beside the last window, furthest away from the teacher's desk. Being bored, she craned her neck slightly to peer out into the school's driveway. The clouds were white and fluffy today, the breeze swaying young trees. A peculiar sight, however, greeted her as she stared on dreamily. She realized that a boy, sitting on the curb of the driveway, was waving to her. Parisa focused on the boy as he picked himself up and dusted his pants. Parisa arched her neck to get a better view. _Wait, was that John?_ He had his bag with him.

She could make out a few of the crude hand signs John was making: one was a "here"; he vigorously shot his index finger towards the asphalt, another was "after school". He simulated the manual tolling of the bell, going ding, dong, ding. Parisa had almost started signalling back when Mr Hall's crisp voice cut through to her.

"Well, I think Parisa here would like to demonstrate solving the question." Everyone had their eyes on her, she realised.

"O-of course, sir," Parisa said, and started distractedly to explain her answer. She tried to blink John away, who was still waving hard for her acknowledgement. She continued on with her explanation, resisting the urge to shoo John away.

"Yes, but not quite," Mr Halls said to the class as Parisa finished. "You forgot that the times between the two values adds the powers together when in the same base. Only a power of a power are multiplied."

Parisa was dismayed; she prided herself in being perfect at Maths. She frowned inwardly, and concentrated on Mr Halls' commentary on algebra, listening intently for anything she may have missed out last year. A muffled "hey!" brought her attention quickly back to the window. A slanted gaze towards Parisa's left revealed a bulky teacher's back eclipsing John. He wrapped John up in his arms, which were impervious to John's squirming and kicking, but he pushed himself above the teacher's shoulder and cocked his head at Parisa. _An answer, yes or no!_ was what his piercing gaze told Parisa. Seeing Mr Halls turned away to the screenboard, writing something, she gave John a quick nod before turning back to Mr Halls. She would not have herself be caught inattentive once more, and could only hope John got her answer. Yet, a tiny voice in her head told her he would be waiting there even if she had said no.

* * *

Parisa was fifteen minutes late for dismissal after Miss Amberline's intoxicating lesson on the behaviour of wild bees and propagation strawberries on Earth in Earth Sciences class. She immediately rushed out of the classroom, only to see John's compact form against a pillar, facing the canteen. Anticipating a cynic cluck of disapproval from John as she approached, Parisa was about to tap John on the shoulder and say sorry when he whipped around right on cue.

"Parisa," John tripped on his greeting while a fleeting smile met the same fate. It twitched once and disappeared.

Parisa returned the smile, mystified. _Whatever happened to the boy?_ Parisa was dumbfounded at this sudden change in temperament. As John visibly clenched his jaws, defiant eyes staring unblinkingly at the floor, Parisa wondered if he was about to confess... _No, a boy would never call on a girl simply to confess. A boy, confess to his wrongs? Never gonna' happen, _Parisa thought as she pursed her lips, recalling the incident that happened a week ago. It was the second time Parisa had seen the rascal, who had more than come close to soiling her school attire. A whole bucket of paint crashing down on her from a floor above was not her definition of fun, but it certainly was to those three musketeers. _No prizes for guessing who threw the paint._

Parisa stood akimbo in front of the affected first grader, and rising up to full height, asked, "Well? What's so important?"

John shook himself from the pillar and took his thumbs out of his pockets.

He stared, "I just wanted to–"

"No need, it's fine. I have already forgiven you three, John." Parisa felt her pride swell as she finished off smoothly. She watched John fumble for words with satisfaction.

"Oh... Um... That was you? Sorry, Parisa, I... didn't know that was you. I planned to apologise whoever that was, but I could not recognise the girl under all that paint, and so..." John trailed away. A wilted potted plant seemed to have caught his attention.

Parisa was left completely nonplussed after John's impossibly chaste reply. She could not even utter a "what?" out of incredulity.

"I, ah, actually wanted to ask you out," John continued staring at the potted plant by the doorway. Without noticing Parisa's gaping, he continued, "to my place, of course, because today's my birthday." He looked up hopefully at Parisa.

Parisa shut her mouth. _Was he serious?_ Not that Parisa detected insincerity, but John had said it with enough conviction to mow a lawn twice over. It almost seemed laughable, the tight lips and lowered eyes waiting for a response, but Parisa reigned in her laughter as a cough. It _was _starting to get cold. It was already four in the afternoon. A wide swath of dark clouds had rolled in silently when they were talking.

She stared into the sky and pretended to think. "I don't kn–" Parisa had not finished before John supplemented "Please?" His left hand peeked out of his pocket. His fingers were crossed.

"I guess I could," Parisa started slowly with a shrug. When she saw John's eyes light up, she burst out in giggles.

"What? What's so funny?" he snapped. He blinked away watery eyes.

"Oh, nothing," Parisa said and continued grinning. John pulled a face but motioned for her to follow. Parisa was still trying hard to stifle a snicker as they walked towards the school gates.

* * *

John a few streets away, Parisa realised when he mentioned his block number. He was further down the lane, where garages gradually got bigger and bigger, until they evolved into ridiculously expansive gardens which housed castles within. Parisa could imagine John rolling around in turfed patches around an impressive white-clad villa. She tucked it away quickly, though, when John told her where she lived was much _better_ than his home. Parisa tried to figure out what he meant by _better_. When John did not elaborate, she added, "The grass is always greener on the other side, right John?" He did not laugh, and Parisa's smile faltered slightly.

"Want to get a drink? My treat," Parisa asked as they passed the Eston Mart.

"Anything." John's reply was short in the splintering cold air. He settled himself on a bench outside the small blue convenience stall and wrapped a loose grey wind breaker closer to him as a chilly gust of autumn wind blew past.

Parisa sighed and left him to suffer the cold winds outside the mart by himself. She, on the other hand, chose the mart's relative warmth.

A bent figure was unpacking a cargo carton behind the counter. Parisa recognised the thin, balding man immediately.

"Mr Horie! I'm here to get two of your milkshakes!"

The man straightened up and adjusted his glasses.

"Oh! Parisa, what do you need this time?" He had not registered Parisa's request, and she had to reiterate.

"One for you and one for your stubborn friend outside?" Mr Horie smiled cheerfully as he got the blender ready. He had noticed John sitting by the lamppost.

Parisa nodded. Mr Horie's little store provided for, more or less, everything, ranging from art supplies to birthday cakes. He was a middle aged man, probably almost fifty, and had been around for as long as Parisa could remember. He was a nice man, _though... no, never mind that. Uncle has always had his own views._

Parisa drifted away from the counter towards the chocolates shelf further into the store. They are mostly boxes of soft chocolates, but there was also one sizeable slab of hard chocolate on display, a rare sight. Its signage shouted out in bright pink letterings: inscribe in your own handwriting whatever you want! Perfect for couples, it also said below. It came across to Parisa as the perfect gift for John. _I, for one, am buying out of convenience, and nothing more._ The price tag on the chocolate was agreeable to her day's budget; _a ten dollar gift would not hurt much, _Parisa assured herself as the slab and swiped her wrist across the electronic counter to check out the item.

Ten credits were deducted from the credit chip inside her wrist-com. Everyone living in the Eridanus System wore one. It was the local method for administration and transaction. It was a useful piece of electronic that could also send messages and show the time. Parisa preferred to use it as little as possible though. The image of herself being glued to her wrist-com terrified her. But it was a requirement to wear one, so there was no escaping from using it sometimes, but she still had her reservations about being too dependent on it. However, as soon as school started, children had to wear, or at least carry, one. It was law to have your com, where identification was stored, wherever you went. Parisa's was Mandarin orange with two green rubber leaves crossing tips where the band locked to form a loop. Her father brought it home from somewhere when she started Grade one, and again, it was a present for her. It was of a nice tangerine tinge, a few shades darker than her skin was, and had a nice design, so Parisa did not mind wearing hers on her wrist. She knew of other girls who abhorred wearing them, who kept it in their pockets all the time. Parisa could empathise with them, but she still felt that it was more useful to wear, no matter how plain or unattractive the wrist-com was. But it was not for Parisa to comment on what others did.

"Well, Parisa, I wouldn't say I were surprised, a cute lil' girl such as yourself, but ain't the boy outside a bit young?" Mr Horie's eyes twinkled.

Parisa shot Mr Horie a piercing glare which made sure to keep his mouth shut tight after that, though he continued to grin merrily.

She used Mr Horie's laser (new equipment, Mr Horie certified) to write the classic "Happy Birthday" onto the chocolate, and after much consideration, an acrimoniously drawn heart around it. She was not willing to be outdone by John's theatrics of hugs and kisses, even if it did give Mr Horie another chance to raise his eyebrows.

The chocolate was packed in a case and wrapped up, and then hidden in Parisa's bag. The milkshakes were passed over. It was a total of sixteen dollars and eighty cents.

"Oh, Mr Horie, I almost forgot! I also need to leave a message for my mom," Parisa said.

"Earthside for business again?" Mr Horie ducked under the counter and took out the shop's transmitter.

"She's coming back tonight, so I just wanted to tell here, wherever she is, not to worry about me. It never is sufficient for her to stop worrying, though." Parisa tied up her hair before recording a message for her mother, furnished with a video recording and Elysium City's tagging, and left the mart.

Mr Horie's milkshakes were a delectable warm fudge of chocolate and vanilla perfect for fending off cold weather. Parisa had already taken a sip before she stepped out of the mart, and it warmed her cold bitten nose and cured her dry throat. She approached John, about to pass him his share and prompt him to drink his milkshake warm.

A rustle of leaves, and then the sound of a muted explosion came from John's hand-held device. His fingers were obscuring Parisa's view, but she could tell it was a Senda space battle simulator, one of the most advanced systems even adults could not get their hands off. _Well, those who could afford it, at least, the rich brat. _Her uncle had recently received one for a pre-release trial run, and that was only because he was close friends with one of the company's game technicians. _My chocolate would be an insult. _John caught sight of Parisa exiting the mart, and packed up to leave. The console received a rough push, and the thousand dollar console was in his bag, which was to tumble and churn inside the bag for the remainder of the journey.

* * *

The pair walked in silence, slurping their drinks as they went.

"Don't you have some other friends to attend to?" Parisa said, curious why she was the only one with John on the way to his home.

"I have everything under control," John said, and gave her a dazzling smile.

_A rich kid it is_, Parisa determined.

They came up on John's house soon enough. It _was _a mansion, and Parisa could not have guessed it better. A full residence resplendent in an array of flowering shrubs and a complement of tall oak trees in the front garden, and an old maid hosing the plants to complete the scene, as in a more than perfect dream.

As they crossed the garden, the maid smiled warmly to Parisa, but did not say anything. They entered. The walls were covered under thick, velveted wallpaper, and the floor was carpeted. Carpeted marble, from what she could make out. The house was large, but it was still strangely quiet for a birthday. _Where is everybody?_ Parisa did not think she was about to be caught in a birthday party ambush.

They took a spiral staircase (still marble) up to the third floor. Something did not sit right with Parisa. _Was it the lack of homeliness from the frigid marble or the disconcerting lack of people? _Both, Parisa thought, when they came to John's room. It was the first place that actually looked like a home. A well-worn parquet and a cluttered desk and shelf did much to take the pressure of the grandiose atmosphere off from Parisa. The one largest component in a party was however missing: friends and family. Parisa had not seen another person in the estate other than the old maid working outside.

Parisa was pulled into a chair. She opened her mouth to speak, but John placed a finger on her lips. A hidden fridge in the shelves opened, and John reached in. A small, white cream cake was magicked out of it, and John produced a lighter and candles from his drawer. A click of the switch, and the room darkened, and a click of the laser lighter, and the room burned bright again with candlelight. John let the candles burn, and the pair watched the six candles formed a hypnotic ring of shivering flames.

John said in the flickering light, "Firstly, I think I have to explain why there are only two people here. My parents would not have had visitors, but maybe just one person would be okay, in my room. They'd never know. I thought I would share my birthday cake with a friend."

"How about your parents?"

"They are never home. Not that I want their company," John muttered the last sentence.

"Are they bad to you?"

"No."

"No-nonsense type?"

"No."

"Then what?" Parisa sputtered.

"They ignore me. They are always working, in office, when they are out, and at home. It really sucks." John stared blankly at the shortest candle. "They throw toys at me and then ignore me. Simple as that." John blew out all six candles in one breath, and the lights came back on again.

"Let's have the cake," John said, clearly wanting to drop the topic. He cut a slice for Parisa.

It was strawberry shortcake. _Didn't think a boy would like strawberries, cream and all._

The cake slowly dwindled down to the last slice, which was shared among them. It _was_ nice, Parisa had to admit. The conversation turned towards the cake.

"Where did you get the cake?" Parisa asked.

"I baked it. Before I came to school."

Parisa visualised John being dragged away from the pavement, and she caught on on why he was so rudely pulled away by the earlobe.

John ate his last half slice in silence. He licked his lips and laid back in his chair, and sighed contentedly.

He looked at Parisa for a while before asking, "So, your name is Parisa, right? I heard from your uncle."

Parisa received a shock in the back. _Uncle Hayato?_ Parisa momentarily felt sorry for introducing herself earlier.

"Parisa Hanabusa. Pleased to meet you, John."

John gave a "hmph" signalling recognition.

"John Doe."

"Interesting surname, Mr Doe."

"Isn't it."

Parisa hesitated before daring to ask, "Your real surname?"

"My father's Roderick Doe. My name has had no trouble becoming a joke wherever I go."

"John Doe, the anonymous guy, I can see why," Parisa half sang, and did not disagree.

"Yeah. And the biggest joke would be that I was adopted, and I, picked up from god knows where. My parents haven't let it slip yet." John sneered to no one in particular, but Parisa felt hurt all the same.

A silent glumness fell between the two children, both unsure of what next to say.

A loud beep-beep, beep-beep in the dense quietude startled both back to John's cosy little room. A transmitter message had bounced its way to Parisa's wrist-com, and was received by John's house. She opened the message. Her mother's voice said, "Parisa, I never remembered giving you permission to go out on your own. But whatever the case, get home by six, or else I will have you stay with Uncle Hayato. Your brother will be home at night." The recording ended.

The virtual clock on her wrist-com display was already half past five, and getting home would take twenty minutes at best.

"I had better go," Parisa murmured, and reached for her bag. _Oh, dang it. The chocolate!_ Parisa quickly dug it out from her bag, but did not reveal it to John. _How should I give this to John?_ Parisa thought, looking guiltily at the heart shape she had drawn. _Just give it to him!_ a small voice yelled frustratedly at Parisa. She bit her lip and threw it at John. Not caring to read John's expression, she huddled away with her bag and hurriedly rushed down the marble stairs, opened the heavy wooden doors, and took off.

John watched from his bedroom window, and saw Parisa dashing off. He then removed the chocolate slab and bit off a tangy mouthful. The cracked bits of chocolate tasted and felt really good rolling around his tongue, over and under. Outside the house, Parisa could almost sense the smouldering of the sintered chocolate melting in John's mouth.

* * *

That's that. Took real long because of my exams and stuff, but I think this chapter came out fine. (Though I still need more vocab! Suggestions, anyone?) Next chapter coming out soon! *Hugs and kisses* - your loving writer-in-progress


	4. Dream

Hi-ho to all the nice people around, I present to you the fourth chapter. I was thinking, maybe you may want to post what you all think would happen in the next/upcoming chapters? I'll post them up just for fun on my profile page. Either way though, happy reading!

**Chapter 3**

**January eighteenth, 2517**

**REM sleep.**

_Parisa knew instinctively that she was wearing a summer dress, even though it was autumn. It was, wasn't it? Probably not, as the sky was still sapphire blue and the fields emerald green. The entire field laid out for her was like that, with a few trees dotting her sight. That was what Parisa saw when the fog, smoke, mist what-be-it cleared. It was silent and still, and the grass smelt vaguely fresh, but it was evenly spread and was not pressing onto her. The wind helped, as it did not blow the heavy scent of spring grass in her face._

_Parisa had picked herself up from a bed of tall grass, and left it for the shorter grass surrounding the small patch of long grass that had held her. _

_She walked, rolled and pranced under the mild sun. She spotted a dome near the river, and she half skipped and half ran to it. The dome came closer, and she could now see that it was made of concrete blocks, not the stereotypical ice that igloos were famed for. She knocked at the concrete walls. It seemed hollow, but it was hard. Relieved, she entered it, even though she felt a chill down her spine. It was cold inside the concrete dome, and Parisa's summer frock had changed into an oversized light blue winter coat. She now felt warm and fuzzy in it. The winter coat was made of synthetic cotton, and was light but warm. _

_Globules of snow were splattered across the concrete dome and floor. Parisa gingerly took step forward to assure herself that no holes pocketed the concrete floor. But she slipped and fell when she cautiously tested a snow puddle. She tried to catch her fall, but her back hit the floor before she could react. She gasped at the pain, but that was not her most immediate worry._

_Parisa had her eyes towards the ceiling, fear coursing through her and wrapping itself around her neck, choking her. She saw a hole was swirling itself into existence, opening a cavity in the curving ceiling. In what she could discern from the small, but ever widening aperture, dark clouds were rolling in, and lighting was roiling across the dark heavens above. It then started to rain. At first, it was a small drizzle, but it quickly picked up into heavier raindrops, which splashed painfully onto Parisa's face. She tried to shake them off, but the rain continued to grow ever more thirsty for strength. Parisa tried to flip herself away from under the hole in the ceiling, but the fast and furious raindrops were pinning her down, and making her coat heavy. Lifting a finger took more than all the willpower she had. _

_She turned her head towards the door – except there was no door. The rainwater was collecting in a puddle around Parisa now. She curled herself up slowly, excruciatingly, just to retain the little warmth left in her. She felt the water clinging to her coat now, dragging her down onto the floor. Why hadn't it change? The water level was rising, yet Parisa could not remember how to stand any more. She lay frozen in her own embrace, holding herself ever tighter together, fearful that she would crumble from the deep-freeze and fall apart._

_The water reached her nose, and Parisa coughed. In a bid to stand, she fell face flat into the water., the hateful, evil liquid which would grab her and drag her deeper into the dark unknowns of the watery depths. She saw that the concrete floor was now meters under her, shadowed in the murky rainwater. The realisation that she was now suspended in water overpowered her, and Parisa, now fully encased in water, struggled for air. Only water entered her, and finally her body gave up. The water invaded her lungs as her body rebelled. Parisa screamed silently, ebbing ever deeper into the livid waters. _

_Uncle Hayato was watching from the water's surface, face veiled behind a screen of undulating water._

* * *

A paradoxically traditional (or was it traditionally paradoxical...?) question from a Chinese philosopher called 庄子(or Zhuang Zi) a long long time ago (no, not Star Wars long, but long enough), I quote: One night, Zhuangzi dreamed of being a butterfly — a happy butterfly, showing off and doing things as he pleased, unaware of being Zhuangzi. Suddenly he awoke, drowsily, Zhuangzi again. And he could not tell whether it was Zhuangzi who had dreamt the butterfly or the butterfly dreaming Zhuangzi. But there must be some difference between them! This is called 'the transformation of things'. Thus we have two rather different things: consciousness (perspective added) and mind (as in the brain and its set computing power which every human has some part of). Go think about it.


	5. All out of Love

**[Edited Oct 28 2012 for unnoticeable things which make a difference]**

Here's Chapter 4. Sorry for the long wait, I have been busy playing Astro Empires. (Go check it out, it's rather fun. If you know what it is, I'm HoB in Juno, galaxy J34. PM me!) Happy reading!

**Chapter 4**

**January eighteenth, Saturday, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Juan quarter, Burdock street #307.**

Parisa awoke from the dream drenched in cold sweat. She was breathing unevenly, and her throat was parched, making her choke as she gulped in the familiar smell of the air in her room.

_I hate water_.

Parisa flipped away the blankets, moist with perspiration, and pulled herself up. She grabbed a pair of shorts and a lose tee by the bedside desk to change into, throwing the ones she changed out off into her laundry bin.

_Your body hates the water, not you._

Parisa had to fumble with the t-shirt's orientation before she was confident the back wasn't the front. The digital on her desk blinked. It was two in the morning. Slightly light-headed from standing up too quickly, Parisa slumped onto her bed again. The screen said it was two in the morning.

She had never known what gave her such overwhelming fear of water. Her mother had given a reply less clear than the ones she gleaned from her dreams: "Don't let it bother you, honey." And that was all. Parisa lay on top of her blankets to dry off. She stared at the ceiling, and black dots appeared. She squinted hard, trying like she always did to find the largest of them all, but they all looked the same. She closed her eyes.

A muffled click in the silence of night felt loud to Parisa. The seam beneath the door lit up like the sun rising above the horizon.

Yet it was not a welcome sign. Parisa peered hard at the seam and perked up her ears, and tried to decipher the movements outside. _Only _o_ne person. And relaxed._ Parisa heard the person settle into the couch and sigh. _Rather contentedly._ A tinkle of ice on glass permeated her room.

Parisa put her feet gently on the parquet. _Was it mother? Father should still be on the asteroid testing facility, and mother had said she was on her way back. For once, she arrived on time. _Parisa slid the door open and slipped out into the corridor. Parisa could see, from the faintly illuminated stairs, that the person sitting in the living room was not a woman. _Uncle Hayato! I should have known mother would never have come back earlier than a day late._ Parisa saw her uncle reading today's papers from the desk-screen, which he had rolled over to the couch, and had propped on his lap. Parisa detected a light trace of beer in the air.

Parisa froze. _Has Uncle Hayato noticed yet? _When he did not turn, Parisa continued down the stairs, tiptoeing each step with meticulous care. She was confident she had not made a sound, but she was not halfway down the stairs before Uncle Hayato turned.

"Trying to scare me off again?"

"No, I-" Parisa started by defending her tiptoeing down the stairs with a smile cheekier than a wood elf. She paused when Uncle Hayato's smile shone through the dim lighting. Parisa beamed back.

"Uncle Hayato, I thought you were off-world?"

"I got back as quick as I could when _your_ _grandmother _started yelling. So your mother pushed the responsibility onto me, saying, 'You have some _guts_ telling me no', and as the younger brother, I had to come."

Parisa shrugged. It was nice to see Uncle Hayato, but he was not always in such a good mood. It would be best to savour Uncle's smile for the moment. She started heading back up the stairs, and to Uncle Hayato's credit, he did not stop her.

The sun had not risen when Parisa got up, but the whirl of the cleaning machine on the road told her it was morning.

Parisa half expected and half hoped Uncle Hayato to be still rooted to his couch in the living room, reading yet another book, today's newspaper, or official-looking reports on God-knows-what his job really was. Mother said he was a United Nations Space Command trades officer, but Parisa thought mother had not look very convinced herself, the only time she had mentioned it.

But he was already gone, which was what the other half of Parisa had strongly suspected. The only he left light on was the cold white lamp at the entrance. Parisa had never liked the lamp; she preferred warm yellow light.

One thing was certain: Mother was not back yet, else the floor would be littered with luggages of all sizes, each colour coded a different shade of black, each for a different purpose, and Mother would be on the sofa again. She always said she did not want to "wake the children up". That was _her_ explanation, anyway.

Not that Parisa expected her mother to be back, not yet, at least. _Someone who could miss two lift-offs and say 'it's nothing, I'll just wait for the next one', then miss the next one as well was bound to be late. That's my mother._

Parisa turned on the lights with a light tap on the dimmed desk-screen. The lights gradually illuminated the room, giving her eyes time to adjust. In the growing light, a small, shiny package caught her attention. It was on the couch which Uncle Hayato had sat on in the night. Parisa eyed it suspiciously before deciding to go over to pick it up.

A tiny scrawl on the shiny foil read: _For Parisa_. Parisa opened the flaps at the end and slid the box out. It was a tin case. A yellow card was stuck onto the cover. Parisa flipped it open with a thumb and read the note.

_If you ever need chocolates, ask me. I know the best place to get them. Oh, and, introduce me to your little friend one day, okay? Love, Uncle Hayato._

It was a slab of chocolate. _How typical of Uncle Hayato to leave without even saying bye. And when did he know about John? _Parisa could not remember. Eyes still on the card, Parisa turned to leave, but her face abruptly met something leaning forward to take a look at the chocolate. She jumped. It was her brother.

"STOP SCARING ME LIKE THAT!" Parisa bellowed.

"Just because Mom and Dad aren't around doesn't mean you can make me deaf, you know."

"THEN YOU THINK YOU CAN SNEAK UP ON ME AND SCARE ME HALF TO DEATH, HUH!" It was more of a statement than a question.

Takuma was in casual synthetic jeans and polo. He had his school file and portable deskpad with him.

"School?" Parisa said.

"Yeah. Extra classes. May I have a bite? Your chocolate, I mean."

"No."

"I knew it. You wouldn't share anything Uncle Hayato gives you. I still remember the time when-"

Parisa gave up. She jabbed the box into Takuma's chest and said, "Take the whole thing. Give it to your girlfriend or something." To her surprise, Takuma did not refuse. He did not even deny having a girlfriend. He said, "Thanks Parisa," and left in a flurry.

"What was that all about. Sure," Parisa mumbled to herself, "extra classes."

She brought out the toaster from the cupboard. Parisa knew more than anyone else her brother would never take the trouble to go for extra classes if they were on a weekend, and that he did not have the capacity to to badly in anything. "Weird," was what Parisa concluded as she munched her toast. _Mother isn't back yet, so I'm free to roam._

Parisa wondered whether John had eaten the ruddy slab of chocolate yet. _That boy needs some talking to_, Parisa thought with a huff. _I have not forgiven him yet for the paint which took me a full day in the bath to __wash off._ Parisa puffed, fuming in spite of herself. _I'll show that little boy_, she thought as she exited the house. _I'll show him._

* * *

Another cold day. Parisa breathed slowly into her hands to enjoy a little reprise from the numbness the cold winds gave her fingers.

She reached the gates of John's house. It would have been a perfect day; with Mother's terminal lack of urgency to leave work to another day and Takuma out of the way, today was slated to be Parisa's day. _Good things come in threes. Don't they?_ Parisa smirked inwardly as she hid behind a bush. She found a little crack in the branch and foilage and peered through. No John in sight, but the kindly caretaker was raking the fallen leaves together by the left gate. She confirmed again that John had not popped out of nowhere like he did had done previously, and walked briskly up to the wrinkly old face and said with as much boldness as she could manage, "Hi, I'm here to see John? He asked me to go in to wait for him." She prayed from her heart that John did not schedule appointments through his mansion's caretaker.

The chemically wrinkly old face did not change for a moment, and Parisa thought she had better tell her the truth, but then it broke into a warm, crinkly welcoming smile that only old people with enough wrinkles could give.

"John's somewhere in the back, where he does his stuff," the old maid pointed at a conspicuously dull metallic extension from the main concrete house.

"Um... Thanks," Parisa decided not to enquire further.

She nearly forgot her main purpose here at John's house, being distracted by John's little shack. It looked exceedingly similar to a large boil, with its peeling maroon paint and rusted steel panels, the result of chemically seeded rain. Parisa shook off the irksome tingling she felt from imagining the boil pop and refrained from commenting.

Parisa snuck up to the side, pressed herself onto the wall, and peeped out. John was waving around what looked like a wooden pole here and there. _Typical boy, trying to all strong and manly by waving sticks longer than themselves. _Parisa sniggered to herself. _He won't see me coming._

Parisa counted down from _three, two... one!_ Parisa stepped silently out from her cover, but John was missing from view, yet again. Parisa frowned. John and the pole were just there a moment ago. _The only place left is the shed. _The door was open by a crack. Parisa padded over lightly to the seam. _I'll give him the scare when he comes out again. _Parisa squatted to be less visible. The door creaked, and was pushed in by the wind. The inside was dark, and there was definitely no John in there.

"Parisa."

The voice breathed next to Parisa. She nearly toppled over. _The second time today this has happened. I've had enough of these boys._ John had ethereally apparated behind her. Parisa's lips started forming a pout, but she thought better of complaining.

"What's with the stick?" Parisa asked, straightening up. Changing the subject was the most prudent course of action now that a situation had presented itself.

"Not a stick, Parisa. It's a _bokuto_. Traditional Japanese wooden sword. I'm sure you know what it is."

An image of the lacquered wooden sword Dad hung on the wall floated up.

"Yeah, I know it."

John looked different today. It was as if the furore he had been keeping hidden had set the air around him ablaze. His eyes burned with energy infused with inextinguishable fuel.

He twirled the sword by his sides in two graceful arcs and brought it down resolutely in the third stroke. He smirked when he saw Parisa go rigid. The tip of the blade was a centimetre from her chest.

Pairsa pushed the sword away, but John did not give. He kept the sword steady. _Oh, so you want a challenge? _Parisa picked up long branch from the ground and held it at arms length. _Good length and weight_. She held it in her right hand and threw it at John. He parried it with a flick and it sailed back at Parisa, who caught it deftly in her left hand. _I can do this. _

"If you want a fight, do it right!" John's eyes flared up from the challenge. He was excited.

"Then take this fight outside, out of your comfort zone!" Parisa barked back.

That stoked a small grin from John, who shrugged and said, "After you." John collected some equipment, and the pair marched out, heading for the park.

* * *

They had switched to _shinai –_ something Parisa had often heard about from her father, but had never seen in real life – and had armoured up, head and torso, for the exercise. The _shinai _was supposed to be lighter and softer, but when John whipped it around it did not really matter what he was using. He was dangerous.

A few rounds of clashing swords in the park proved that Parisa had John severely underestimated. A few blows from John had landed her in the leaf pile and resulted and tiny scratches on her palms and knees.

John looked intently at Parisa. Apart from the fire in his eyes, it was impossible to tell what he was feeling today, and it gave Parisa the shivers. Parisa sat where she had landed and checked out her arms. There was a cut on her left elbow. She stood up again and held her sword level. John's previous lunge replayed in her mind's eye; A sidestep to her left, then a duck as Parisa swung her sword at John, then a hard push from John's sword aimed at her abdomen had her sprawling on the ground. The hard polythene armour plates she wore protected her, but the force of the blow was enough to life her off her feet, making for a hard landing on her butt.

But that was already part of the past. Parisa refocused on John's sword, and waited. John kept his gaze straight and unblinking. His chest expanded and fell in regularly spaced breaths, and Parisa realized her own was nearly twice as fast. The rustle of leaves at John's feet, the wind blowing onto Parisa's face. John dug his heels into the ground, tensed up as he raised his sword, and sprang at Parisa.

The first stroke was to the right shoulder. Parisa expected the angle, and so allowed herself to block the attack prematurely. She realized too late, however, that the feint working was what John was betting on. He had already pushed off to Parisa's unprotected left, leaving Parisa's sword too low to pull back fast enough and swing her body left to block.

John's blade connected with Parisa's left shoulder. He had won the round again. It was the sixth time – Parisa had counted – but it seemed much more. Frustrated, Parisa swung her blade at John with one hand. She did not think that John would parry it, sending it flying, then push her to the ground. A torch of anger was burning in his gaze.

"You do _not_ attack when you have lost." And that was final. Then the fire softened.

"Sorry, don't-" John did not get to finish his sentence. He was pushed from the back, and he fell forward into a pile of leaves. Takuma reached for his shoulder to pull him back up, but John gripped Takuma's wrist, halting his movement. Takuma tried to wring his wrist free from the small hand's grip, but it was iron tight.

Takuma blinked in surprise. John pulled himself up from the outstretched arm, and stared Takuma in the eye. Parisa remained silent, heart pumping. Still on the ground, she saw John turn to leave. Pad, pad, pad. _Just walk away, and don't get hurt... Don't turn... _

"_No!_" Takuma had gripped his fists. He wanted to say something. But John was not facing him. An impulse. Takuma aimed for John's shoulder. He pulled. John shrugged his hand off and shot a killer stare up at Takuma.

"_No!" _Parisa's silent cry of despair reached neither Takuma nor John. Takuma started off, "Hey, look here-" but John elbowed him in the stomach and toppled Takuma, reduced now to hugging himself, eyebrows clutched together, teeth clenched, partly to hold in the pain and partly to stop a wail of agony leave his lips.

Parisa immediately scrabbled towards her brother across the dehydrated soil to her brother. The pain had already subsided, and Takuma was breathing in and out slowly, wincing every time he breathed. It still hurt.

Parisa snapped around to look for John, but he was gone without a trace. Instead, she found a pretty girl, half hidden by a tree, standing a distance away, biting her lip. She was holding Takuma's school-work. And at the corner of Parisa's eye, she saw Takuma flick a thumbs-up at her. Parisa's patience snapped.

"So this was all a stunt to you? One big show to pull off to your girlfriend? What am I to you, really? What? I have feelings, which you know very well, or probably because you are too darned self-centred to realise that I am actually your sister you treat me like this?" Parisa screamed in Takuma's face, before she stamped her feet and stormed off. She picked up the two wooden swords on the way out.

She was already crying even before Takuma was out of sight. _Stupid boys! Is fighting their first reaction to everthing? And... why are girls so often in the middle of it? _Parisa sniffed. _Probably I should have been a boy as well. So that I could give both of them a beating. I wish I were a boy._

* * *

Parisa sat on the doorstep. She had not gone in since she got back an hour ago. It just seemed so pointless, this so-called 'going home' when there was nobody there to make it feel one bit what it was Mom doing? Probably making new contacts, signing new contracts, for every one credit she earns. Father? Asleep, and not dreaming of me, since he was flying back home in the freeze box again. He never seemed to grow much older. Mother always complained that he grew old too slowly, while she was ageing too fast. At least, there was a plus point pitched against mother's bitterness; he did not change overly much when he got home every once a year, and he always brought back the best from Earth: Albums of singers the Eridanus system had only the slightest inkling about, marshmallows with an organic magnetic compound that was harmless but made them stick to fridges, or float in a cup specially made to repel the marshmallows so they floated right in the centre, and once, even an android that learnt the owners speech patterns and basic logic processes so that it could make simple choices for the owner. Like whether she would buy a lolly that she loved for a slightly higher price. She did a simple experiment and found that it was eighty-six point two percent accurate. Not bad, Parisa thought. But it did not change the fact that father was not here.

And Takuma. The idiot was probably in his girlfriend's house, swooning to her about how he protected his little sister from harm. _Harm_ _my foot._ What was it that he yelled at her before she left? That John was the bully of the school, that he was the roughest he'd ever seen, and that he was protecting her. _How in the world was that possible. John had moved in less than a month ago. _Parisa gnashed her teeth and snarled at the Takuma in her mind's eye saying, "I was only trying to protect you." _That guy seriously made my day._

"Ughhh!" Parisa cried out at the sky, and blinked away her watery eyes.

The door slid open, and someone stepped out.

"Hi mom," Parisa said, eyes still angled out and up at the rapidly darkening sky. _I should have know mom was back. Why didn't I just go in. Now I would need an hour telling mom that everything was fine._

"Why did I ever become a woman? Must be the flowers I brought back," a baritone voice chuckled behind her.

Parisa arched her neck backwards.

"_Otousan_!" Parisa's mouth was wide open. Her father was not supposed to be back till a month later.

He put up his hands and said, "I know, I know, I'm not supposed to be back before February, that was what I said, _but_," Father paused for the sake of an imaginary drum roll, "_I_, got promoted, and got to come back early. Happy?" He could not contain a smug grin that Parisa had seen so many times on Takuma that wanted to kick awry right away. She stared for a while longer though – she could not believe her eyes.

A few vexed heartbeats passed before Parisa could fully acknowledge her father's presence. She reached for his outstretched hand, and her father promptly pulled her back up. He was home. _If this were a dream, I would want to stay here a little longer._ Parisa hugged her father tight, and she started to cry.

* * *

I have been thinking about the as of now rather out-of-character John of now. I think it is because he is seen through Parisa's eyes, that's why he may seem OOC. He's a man (boy) of many talents (though not all of you may agree to how I describe it). Well, don't you lot worry. I shall try my best to keep John in shape.


	6. Fourty Winks

**[Edited April 12 2012, November 2 2012 for a major restructuring of the prose, mostly before the second divider and after the last] **

It's been a while, and I've been here and there, never really doing anything. Oh well. Here's the new chapter! Hope y'all like it. P.S. I looked at what I said at the start of Chapter 2, and I thought, what the fag was I doing? And so, hence, thus, the below. Enjoy. But not too much. This chapter wasn't so good to begin with.

**Section II**

**Chapter 5**

**March Twelfth, Friday, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Burdock Street #307.**

A bird chirped.

Parisa stirred, and stretched under her blanket before flipping over onto her belly. She propped her chin on the edge of the bed without opening her eyes. _Bright already. _She could tell that it was morning from the sunlit environment beyond her eyelids. _Another day. _She opened her eyes and blinked. The sun had just risen and was positioned behind a bank of trees on the walkway. Light was starting to stream into the room, and motes of light bounced off the swirling dust dancing around her. Parisa felt the urge to sneeze.

It was 7:06 on the clock. _Early_. Another bird whistled, reminding her to open the windows. Fresh air blew lightly onto her face. Her shoulders ached and her back was cramped. _Another period already._ She had her first a few months back. She remembered. It was the seventh of November, when she came home from tennis practice, she felt gummy between her legs. Pulling off her skirt revealed bloodied shorts underneath, for which she was utterly disgusted at herself.

Being the confused girl she was five months ago, she had first washed the blood off her shorts, and had then examined herself thoroughly. She was not hurt, no cuts, and nothing torn. She had sat on her bed then, and calmly concluded that that had been her first period. She felt relieved at the time, actually, that it had finally come. She had caught herself thinking, _Getting there, Parisa!_ and smiling wanly at herself in the mirror, seeing how she had grown. Only afterwards did she find what a hassle it was dealing with it herself every month. _What the hell did I do to get these shitty periods. _

_Where were those absorbent tampons again? _Today there were to have swimming lessons – Parisa shivered at the thought of the pool. _I hate water._ She chose to forget about them. _Deal with it later_. _Later, later,_ a voice inside her urged. Parisa gladly obeyed.

* * *

Parisa got out of the steamy shower and dried herself. The reflection she saw in the mirror was ebullient in the morning light beaming through the flip-open window at the corner of the bathroom. _My reflection,_ Parisa noted with satisfaction. She twirled around, glimpsing every angle of her figure in the mirror. _Nope, not too thin here; not fat there either. _She finally settled her body perpendicular to the mirror. _I feel... fuller._ And she was. Her chest was finally starting to gain definition. She could see now that the shadows the two convex protrusions cast were rounder and were edged further down her side.

Her fingers dipped into the supple skin that lined her chest, and allowed a wiry smirk to touch her lips as a her sense of touch was greeted with an unexpectedly springy response. This had to be nature's gift for having her deal with the two buds on her chest being so detestably sore and skin being so tight and itchy for the past few months. She had thought a good many times that she should just rub them out of existence and be done with it. She cupped her hands on her bosom, with the base of her palms pressed to her sides, palms merely brushing her skin. She tried reached out to the centre with her fingertips. Her fingertips pointed at each other from either side, not coming within a centimetre of each other. Parisa grinned explosively, and then giggled at her own excitement. Previously when she checked a couple of months ago, her fingertips had still connected. _Neat._

Hot air gusted down the nape of her neck as the hair-dryer whirred in Parisa's hand. Her hair glowed with the ice-cool warmth of obsidian, and she knew it. It was, after all, praised the most by adults and friends alike. _Should I tie it up?_ Parisa contemplated on leaving it as it was, but she finally settled on something more elaborate. She decided on a braided ponytail, which she promptly plaited. She tied down the last fold, and then turned her head to inspect her handiwork. _Effort _not_ wasted, unlike on some other days..._ she grimaced at her previous attempts. _At least this is commendable work. Mom would be proud._ Parisa smiled at the thought of showing off at school today.

She emerged from the bathroom. It was a cold morning. _Shouldn't have opened the windows. _She rummaged through the drawer and retrieved a bra._ Crap__, forgot to dye them back to white. Hopefully Mrs Ling won't notice. _Parisa extracted the matching pair of panties and slipped them on. There was no doubt that the upper piece was getting bindingly tight. Compared to a year ago when they were simply pointy, calling for mother to have her wear a bra to cover them up "for decency's sake", the two cusps were now entirely filled out. Parisa still wore the first one her mother picked for her, a simple band of cloth wrung together in the middle to give room for outward expansion, held to her chest by four stretchable straps that came together at the back, meeting to form one cord that she could pull to adjust the bra's fit. Parisa felt like an artist who had carefully fleshed out a painting to its fullest potential, with ripe colours and fulfilling depth, as she circled the freshly layered mounds on her chest with her fingertips, feeling out the recently-gained curvature of the soft tissue accentuating her chest. Just like how good paintings seemed to overflow from their canvas, the cloth now restrictively pulled taut over her chest, stretching the bra's capacity to the limit. _It's getting less and less kind to my body every day__. _The elastic straps still dug uncomfortably into her shoulders even though Parisa had already lengthened them. _Is it my imagination that the bottom piece is starting to feel a little tight too_?

The summer uniform that hung on the cupboard handles was a white shirt and a peach coloured skirt. She expediently buttoned up her shirt and latched her skirt around her waist. They felt constrictive too. She made a mental note to get new clothes soon, and slid downstairs for breakfast.

It was quiet in the house, except for the barely audible snoring coming from her father's room. But the crusty smell of toast lingered; her brother was already out. _What does he do nowadays, waking up so early all the time._ Parisa felt that she could make a guess.

The holoscreen was left on at the dinner table. _Forgetful brother._ A large earthquake had happened at Tokyo, a local city named after the famous Japanese capital. Revolving stereographic images of the devastated city played on and on in a loop. Parisa sighed, a stab of sadness coursing through her. It pained her to see people suffer while not being able to do anything she reached over to snatch the jam, a headline flashed. "_UNSC warns of imminent rebel recursion: Eridanus Systems_" Parisa saw at the corner of her eye. _First a natural disaster, and now rebels. This System is now officially more screwed than it ever was._ She shut down the screen, staring past it, out the kitchen window at a tree. Slumped on the hard wooden chair, Parisa felt the insignificance of her ponytail.

Two sharp raps on the door brought Parisa out of her brooding. She hurriedly stuffed the remaining toast down and strode over to the door.

John was at the doorstep; the screen showed when Parisa activated it.

"What, couldn't find the doorbell?" Parisa was miffed at having to come down to open the door. The cam would have had activated if the doorbell rang, which it evidently did not, and recognised the person outside and let him in.

"No. I was thinking about you. I wanted to hear your voice."

Parisa felt a pinkish tinge reach her cheeks. She crossed her arms.

"And?"

"And wondering how you would respond to me not ringing the doorbell."

Parisa's lips puckered. She keyed the door close before John could object, closing it behind her without a modicum of hesitation. Her bag was still upstairs in her room. _About time to get going anyway._ She leapt up the stairs two at a time, and opened the door to her room.

John was retracting his foot from the window ledge.

He turned back and gave Parisa a wide-eyed look. "Just thought I would get your bag for you."

Parisa bared her teeth at him, but he did not waste any time in making a dash for the bag, which was tucked at the side of Parisa's desk. _That was fast_. Parisa was on her toes in a moment, but John swiped it – brushed it past her outreached fingers, and dived out of the window again. Parisa followed by a footstep away, but stopped short at the window. He jumped to one side, which had tile roofing, then hung himself down. Parisa followed without hesitation, falling only one step behind John.

John just stared at her blankly, as if making a judgement.

Parisa took a breather before coming up to John.

"What?"

"Just thinking."

"About?"

"About how purple suits you so well."

Generating a sudden acceleration in her right foot, the sole of Parisa's shoe connected hard with John's shin. He keeled forward, slapping himself onto the grass without resistance. She broke out laughing.

Parisa saw that John's returning smile did not quite spread across his face.

"I'm sor-"

John bawled out in mirth, and Parisa could tell he was _really_ laughing. She breathed easier. At least he was not angry.

He straddled his bag and was about to pick about Parisa's when she tackled him, taking possession of it. He sighed, giving up. He shrugged and strode ahead, leaving Parisa behind.

* * *

Uncle Hayato appeared in school spontaneously that morning. This time he seemed to have become a... what was that word? Cameraman? How uncommon.

"In preparation for a minister's visit that won't happen." He replied while setting up his vidcam when Parisa caught him in the act by the field on her way to school.

"Why won't he come?"

"Because he told me he wouldn't." Uncle Hayato's flat response deflated Parisa.

"You're no fun." She pouted.

Uncle Hayato flashed a grin. Parisa hated it. He always loved being mean. Especially to her. She stuck out her tongue and took off to rejoin her class. She took up the last space in the line behind John. Considering solely his physique, he did not seem a year younger than the rest of the class, not to mention two. His shoulders were broad – wider than many other of the boys in her class, and his height was not lacking either. Well no, not _her_ classmates, _their_ classmates. John had been _promoted_ two years because the teachers could not handle him like a younger child. _Two!_ Some said his attention wandered too much, some said he was too fast for the class, and others said he "disrupted the equilibrium of class dynamics", whatever _that_ was supposed to mean. _As if moving him up a year or two would help._ But Parisa was secretly glad that he was moved to her class. He was such a sweet table-mate.

The school was assembled on the tiny field. The principal was on the podium reading off a porta-screen, rambling on about a 'threat to security'. Parisa joined her classmates, taking the last spot in the line. John was now second last.

Her mind wandered. Uncle Hayato, working in the school. Though it was only for the day, and he was not even attached, Parisa felt a weird tingle as she thought about what him being in the school compound. 'Infiltrated' came to her mind wherever Uncle went. Infiltrated the mall, because he was always dancing through the crowds. Infiltrated her house, because he always came in the middle of night and left before she awoke. Now he infiltrated the school to take pictures of someone not there. What _was_ he doing all the time? The answer had never really been answered by Uncle Hayato, much less Father. We have never been to his house before. Who's to say he had one? He never talked about what he did for a living. He could have been a cleaner bot on UNSC stations for all she cared. But then again, he always brought such exotic things that had UNSC trade union shipment bans on.

The principal finished off with a huff, sauntered off the podium, and let the school AI announce in her most tiresome voice, "You may all leave for lessons."

The students broke into small bubbly pockets, which rapidly dispersed in all directions.

* * *

The locker room was abound with the constant murmur of the latest rumours and gossip gaining ground among the different Year Four girls taking physical education now whilst they were changing. Parisa found a locker at the back end of the room, having arrived late from class council duties.

A girl from another class on the left was giggling away to Jean, Parisa's classmate since last year, while attempting to put her second foot into her swimsuit. She missed, got caught in the form-melding material, and stumbled. She hopped twice on her right foot, trying to keep her balance, but in failing to do so, crashed into the locker with a little shriek, and bounced right off, finally reeling towards Parisa. She caught the girl and steadied her before letting go.

"Thanks, Parisa," the girl said. "Whew. I hate this new material. Couldn't they just have kept the old wrap-ons instead?"

A few nearby girls nodded in agreement. _But w__ho was this girl who knew me by name?_

Jean squeezed over and quickly flicked her eyes at Parisa, an idea seeming to have struck her. What idea, Parisa had no idea.

"Perfect timing, Parisa! Now that you have met face to face, why don't you ask her, Lin?" Jean gave Parisa the wide smile that always hinted trouble.

"Alright." Lin quickly locked her fierce eyes onto Parisa's. "Sworn to secrecy?"

Parisa held out her palm to her abrupt new acquaintance, and Lin clasped it as if they had been childhood friends. Now that the ritual was complete, Lin returned to her unasked question.

"Well. I have this little question for you..." Lin paused, and shifted her feet, looking down at the grey polymer flooring.

Parisa unhooked her skirt from her waist and folded it, staring down intently the whole way, not wanting to seem too friendly to a complete stranger who had just nearly crashed into her. She proceeded to unbutton her shirt, and put it in the locker together with her skirt. Lin still had yet to speak.

"I know you sit beside John but I want to know are you two together?" Lin rushed out the sentence in one breath.

"No," Parisa replied automatically, while still halfway through processing the question. She realised that the way she had said it did not produce the effect she wanted. _Answered slower and more carefully! _

Lin squeaked an "Oh" and twisted her lips right and left, as if trying hard to control a smile.

Parisa kept silent. _Can't take back my words now._

Lin turned back and gave Jean a faint smile whilst Jean raised her eyebrows doubtfully at Parisa. She could only shrug back. There was nothing to say even though she felt that this encounter had gone totally the wrong way.

"_Bzzzt._" The bell rang. Class had started.

"Hey! We're late," Lin said as she stuffed her clothes into her locker. "I'll ask you another time, okay?"

But Parisa already knew what she wanted to ask. Or at least, what she wanted. Not that she would give _him_ up willingly. Or would she?

"Let's go, Parisa!" Jean called to her as she and Lin sprinted to the exit. But Parisa took her time. _It's all right. _She said to herself. _It's all right_.

* * *

The boys were already in the pool, speeding through their assigned laps. The girls were only starting to get in. Some were squeamish, retracting their toes from the water as soon as they tested it. It had probably been left unheated to save energy. Especially since it was the time of the in between spring and winter, nobody bothered enough to turn on the heaters now that the weather was turning warmer. Yet it was still cold as spring was still officially a few weeks away. Spots of water being heated by focused light beamed in from the sides of the swimming complex sparkled bright under the fibreglass ceiling, but that was not enough to warm the pool. Eridanus tended to drift far from the sun during the winters here and had to depend on a degree of artificial lighting during the three months. _Wonder what Corin would have to say as to why the water was cold._ Parisa coughed out a small laugh. That would be the senior she had been attached to at the Astronomy club since she joined school at the usual age of four. Corin was eight when Parisa joined school, so she would be twelve now, ready to graduate into college.

Ripples met and dissipated as swimmers crossed each other; the boys were racing in good cheer. Their bags and clothes were scattered on the first few row of benches while the girls' were packed tightly in a line near the top. Boys roughing it out by the pool's edge were being whistled to the teacher, who again had creased brows and pursed lips. The boys waved the white flag, retreating, and the teacher eased up.

"Girls! Rinse and get over here!" He boomed at the benches where girls were still inching over the seats, trying to find a dry spot to sit at. Parisa unslung her bag and put her shirt on top. She looked over at the water. Its light blue shade was menacingly cold for a place built to be warm.

"It's water polo today," the instructor's weather-beaten face said. "Finish ten laps and we can start. Go!"

Some girls moaned, but Parisa was not there to hear it. She jumped in.

Water wrapped around her, encasing her entire body in the liquid. At first, she shrunk away in fear, but she remembered, "Push", and she climbed back up to the surface. _At least my head's above the water now._ Parisa felt a shiver down her spine. Her feet were not touching the floor. _Calm down._ Parisa kept her head bobbing in the water, never submerging herself fully. Her ragged breath told her, _"No, stop killing yourself! Grab onto something!"_ but she paddled all the harder for her fear. She peered at the sky through her rapidly fogging vision. A salty tear was collected at the rim of her goggles. _Okay. Okay. Stop. Let's do this._ Parisa steeled her rapidly firing nerves. They pricked at her, but she ignored them. _Breathe._ Eyes wide, she plunged her head into the water, and swam.

* * *

"_Beee-ep_" the whistle sounded. Parisa could hear it even with her ears filled with water. The game today was girls versus the boys, ten on ten. The leading girls made a fuss about how it was unfair, that they were smaller, weaker and slower than the boys, and the teacher shrugged. He let the boys decide. The girls then pounced on the boys with a mix of puppy looks and venomous stares. Unorthodox, but they got what they wanted. The boys agreed to loaning the girls any boy they picked to side with them. John was unanimously chosen.

Every one of the girls gravitated towards John, glancing furtively at him whenever they could. Hearts seemed to melt whenever he intercepted their gaze and smiled back. Parisa did not share any jealousy. She had more trouble staying afloat as it was.

The boys on the other side were grumbling among themselves, and they leered darkly at the beaming girls, now empowered with a trump card.

The ball was thrown into the pool. It arched past the glaring sun, and made its entrance into the game with a splash. Both sides surged forward, the ball never an inch farther from a player's maximum reach. The ball seemed to bob too nonchalantly to the action in which it was the main character. It flew impartially to where one of the girls threw it too, but rolled to the side on a whim, and got itself caught in a boy's web of five fingers. It was lobbed back and forth, until finally, a boy grabbed hold of it in mid air and pummelled it into the goal.

The girls whooped and the boys cursed, both to no one in particular. The teacher deemed it a score, and the game continued.

Parisa was seeded obscurely at a corner in the boys' territory. Half dazed from the bright sunlight and ceaseless shouts of "Here! No, _there_, not _there_!" She watched the ball fly in indifference. Her attention was diverted only when Lin's repeated shrieks reached her. "Parisa... Parisa!" She felt a splash to her right. She arched back to find a smug little ball believing that she could not throw it. _She'd show them. _Parisa winded the ball back, and stepped forward to throw it. She did, and the shot was good and true. The girls cheered once again, but she was in her own world. Her toe was cramping all the way up her right calf. In the habit of searching for ground, her first toe had dug down deep through the water, only to meet no resistance at all. Something had overextended, but Parisa could not care to figure out what. The pain streaking upwards was numbing all her senses other than the sensation of pain itself. She sunk, down to the pool floor, and gulped in panic as she touched the ground. She looked up. _What a long way up it was..._

Parisa breathed in. She coughed. Half the pool water was swallowed, and the other half gurgled and blanched out at the pool's edge. Through her dislodged fringe she saw girls and the teacher press in on her from above, blotting out the sun. People were muttering, some were shouting, others said nothing. Everyone was swaying left and right, like sea waves, and were silhouettes against the light. Not that she cared.

She pressed her face onto the sparkling tile floor. They were warm. She felt so comfortable now she consciously tried to block out the feeling of her toe being jerked back into position and the pulse of blood flowing back down to her feet.

A freckle-face parted the water surface to her right. _The freckle-face._ Waves lapped onto her shoulders. She grinned deliriously.

She passed out as she was hoisted up by John. She distinctly remembered the little devil inside of her smirk, "Secured!" before locking her arms around John and blanking out.

* * *

Uncle Hayato even more conspicuous in the infirmary, his towering ovoid apparatus striving to be as out of place as it could in a school's small infirmary. He was talking to John. His vidcam was set to follow his gaze but Parisa could not tell whether it was operational or not.

Uncle Hayato was taking notes though, so Parisa made the guess that it was. _Now Uncle Hayato had transformed into a government journalist, huh. _It fitted him, his frizzled hair and loose Hawaii shirt. Why was it called a 'Hawaii' shirt anyway. What on Eridanus was that? Parisa sat up. Her leg still felt limp. She was reluctant to twiddle her toes, but she did in the end for fear that a limb was missing under the blanket. She pulled them back into a cross-legged position.

Flipping away the white blanket, Parisa saw that she was fully dressed in her school uniform. She felt the tautness of her bra on her chest. She rubbed her legs together. _Also there. _She looked around. Her bag and pool gear were laid out by the side of the bed, folded nicely and lined in a compact row. Other than John and her uncle, the infirmary was empty. The nurse was not around. She caught a sign on the nurse's desk that said, "Away for the day".

_Wait. Who dressed me then? _Parisa was jolted into trying to remember what happened. _I blacked out as soon as I hit the bed. _She reddened as she thought of the possibilities. Half of her poured all its will into urging her mouth to open and ask, and the other half fought as hard as it could to suppress the impulse.

"Uncle Hayato, who changed me out?"

The vidcam lens glinted as it swivelled to eye her.

"Feeling fine, Parisa?" he said as he poured her a glass of water, obviously ignoring her question. There was a subtle change in his eyes that told her he was laughing inside. She was glad for it, though. She probably would not have liked the answer. Questions that did not need to be answered tended to end badly if they were. Gulping down mouthfuls of warm water washed down the throat-parching solution of chlorine saturated saliva.

John explained his presence spontaneously, diverting Parisa's train of thought. _Fantasizing about what had transpired would have to wait._

"Break time. Your uncle," he twitched his thumb at Uncle Hayato, "got me here to see if you were okay."

He then leaned forward into her ear and whispered, "More like followed me here, actually. He was lost when I found him while on the way here."

Parisa chuckled. She was laughing at her uncle, but she could not help but find John's candidness in front of the adult he was talking about amusing as well.

"I heard that. But since I got what I wanted, I better be off."

The vidcam contracted into a compact football with legs, which Uncle Hayato attached to his bag. Parisa was in awe of her good luck. She was with John, alone!

"Oh, and I will be having dinner at your place. Tell your Dad. I invited myself."

"Just go!" Parisa shooed him off. Uncle Hayato winked and was gone.

Parisa stared into John's eyes. They were so blue, so unlike hers. Her gaze wandered, and she pored over every inch of his face. The shadow cast from his nose by the single light source in the room, the tousled brown hair, the freckled cheeks. There was a gash that pulled from his temple to his chin – Parisa had just noticed it.

"This?" John slid the back of his hand over it when Parisa pointed. "From play. Others got much more than just a cut like this."

John hooked his bag onto his right shoulder, and Parisa's onto his left.

"Let's go back to class."

John did not pass her bag to her, nor did she ask for it. The picture somehow seemed more balanced this way to Parisa. So, Parisa decided to let him carry it.

_Doki, doki._ Her heart quietly expressed her joy.

* * *

One minute of silence for the Japanese people.


	7. Wolves who cried Hunter

**[Edited April 16 2012, October 16 2012 for minor inconsistencies, November 20 for perfection's sake]**

13 reviews at the end of chapter 5. And the numeral at the front was not written in words, cuz HouseOf13lack is my name!

**Chapter 6**

**March Twelth, Friday, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Mr Horie's Eston Mart.**

"I thought you were going somewhere?" Parisa questioned Uncle Hayato as he handed her two gratuitously creamed, chocolate-laced shakes.

It was his treat today. Not for the drinks themselves, but for the copious cloud of cumulonimbus cream and winding streams of viscous chocolate. She had her own deal with Mr Horie – three milkshakes a week for the price of two. Uncle Hayato got off easy this time. He had only needed to pay a credit more for her extra chocolate and cream top-up. Oh, and for John's as well, of course. She made sure he paid for that too.

"Where to?"

"Somewhere, anywhere. How would _I_ know."

"Well, if you can't think of anywhere, then it's nowhere."

Parisa sighed and thrust the shake at John.

"Incorrigible."

"Bet you can't explain what it means."

Parisa ended up losing half her shake to her uncle.

"Well, at least I'm happy," Mr Horie said, chuckling as his machine whirred itself into action, "that my milkshake machine won't be gone too soon."

Parisa grudgingly paid a dollar for the refill, missing the chocolate and cream, and they left with Parisa muttering darkly about how the world was unkind to young children.

John handed Parisa's bag over to Uncle Hayato, and crossed the road at an intersection. His tall frame cast a long shadow in the fading light of the setting sun.

"So, how did the everything go today?"

"Great," Parisa answered, voice trailing off in the direction of John's shadow, flickering under the eaves of upright trees.

Uncle Hayato snickered and sighed longingly.

"Great for John too, I suspect."

"Who said anything about John?"

"In my time, we actually _tried_ to hide our feelings, you know."

Parisa snapped back immediately.

"Who ever said anything about love?"

"You did."

Parisa peered at Uncle Hayato through squinted eyes and scowled. He shrugged in response.

"Don't," Parisa jabbed her finger at Uncle Hayato, "be so candid. It freaks me out, to even think that I have such a shallow uncle."

He raised his brows. Parisa _knew_ he would react to that. Especially after his girlfriend-type ditched him with the word "shallow" as her parting gift. It took place in Parisa's house, no less. There was a small lull in the repartee before Uncle Hayato picked up from where they left off.

"What do you call someone who gives his all for something?" He said.

"Shallow," Parisa pounced.

"Thought you might say that."

They passed under the shadow of Parisa's house as they reached the front yard. The sun was already starting to glow orange.

The front door slid open just as they turned into the pathway leading to her house.

Two men stepped out. The swish of long forgotten long-coats was the first thing Parisa noticed. It was majestic. It seemed all too familiar, yet there was no name Parisa could put to this particular fashion. It seemed... too unpolished. No, not quite, the garb was to her many times more styled than ungainly work-shirts and uniforms. Its unfinished, incomplete look was what gave it its charm. The right angled shoulder pads? No... The furled sleeves? The black against white? Then Parisa realised what stood out. Black against white. It wasn't the contrast that made her blink; that much was still common. It was the vivid separation of clothing that triggered the unusual response. Coat, shirt, pants. Three unwholesome articles coming together to form a motley match that looked _good_. What people wore rarely made her feel that way. One reason at least was plain to her. Clothing did not come in two pieces today; it had not since the twenty third century. Present clothing _resembled_ what the men wore centuries ago – not the other way around. Parisa surprised herself by thinking like that. In suddenly clarity, she saw an infinitesimal change in her sense of style. The ephemeral sensation passed as quickly as it had come.

The men buttoned up their coats, and made their way out.

It was not one of those up and coming fashion trends, she could tell. Parisa could not put her finger on it, but the coats seemed _used_. She could _smell_ it from where she was.

The no-haired one gave a curt nod as Parisa and Uncle Hayato passed. The red-headed one gave Uncle Hayato a pat on the shoulder and smiled wanly at Parisa.

The breeze blew stiffly, tunnelling into their coats while the coattails hopped on their boots, sharply crunching the gravel underfoot.

_Some uniform that was._ At least that was what they seemed like to Parisa – rugged soldiers' dress uniform. That did not explain the unrest she felt in the pit of her guts though.

She was tickled in the sides, making her cough as she gulped in cool climate-controlled air.

"The house is only a few metres away! You can make it!"

Parisa rolled her eyes, and brushing away her uncle, walked up to the door. Peeling off her shoes, she burst through the door.

A glint from the blade of the sword in her father's hands caught Parisa. She stopped short. _A real sword. _Although Parisa had grown up with seeing the _katana_ being displayed in her father's working room, it was the first time she had seen it moved from its spot by the wall, much less unsheathed and being examined by her father. Not in her presence, at least.

"I'm home." Uncle Hayato said as he passed Parisa by.

"You go shower first, Parisa. Dinner will be ready soon, and your brother will be back any moment," Parisa's mother said from the kitchen.

Parisa hurdled up the stairs, her father's pale face still imprinted in her mind's eye. He had the edge in between his fingers, polishing it with a cloth. His mind was lodged elsewhere. His eye bags were prominent on his drained face, a lips pressed together grimly.

_Why does the house smell so smoky,_ Parisa wondered as laid her bag down on the table. Sinking into a bean bag, she closed her eyes. _John. Dad._ They look so similar, and the feeling they give identical. _Yet so improbably different. _She rolled down the bean bag onto the carpet, on which she stayed a while before getting up to get into the shower.

* * *

Father and Uncle Hayato were already done when Parisa took her seat at the dinner table. She sat beside Takuma, who had one hand glued to a screen projected under the table so that mother would not see, and the other occasionally used to feed himself. His fingers flew across the screen, his vacant smile in sharp contrast with the flurry of activity happening underneath the table. No doubt the micro-speaker he had installed secretly in his ear was iterating the messages that were incoming. He had had it implanted into his outer ear without Father and Mother knowing. Parisa happened to know only because of insider information. She had forgotten what her brother had requested, but what he had traded had stayed with her.

Parisa looked over at him. He picked up the spoon once or twice with his right hand and lifted large chunks of vegetable into his mouth. A lull in activity above, and Parisa noticed his left arm moving even more fervently than before. His wrist muscles twitched one after another as he typed, but under his long sleeves they were not as visible. Parisa rolled her eyes up; a piece of sausage slipped from the fork and into his mouth. If she had not known better, Takuma would have been just the average dumb brother. He hid his secrets so well.

"Is the rice all right? I think I overcooked it a little. Get some vegetables, Parisa. And stop using your tablet when you are eating! I'll confiscate it..."

Parisa looked over Mother's shoulder into the living room. Father was hunched up in conversation with Uncle Hayato. He sighed and shook his head tiredly. Uncle Hayato seemed convinced about something. But Father was more convinced about something else.

The door slid open again, and Parisa surprised herself again by being unsurprised at seeing Red Head and No-Hair breeze right in, each with two cups of Horie's milkshakes. It was comical, almost ironical, to see two men in billowing black leather suits walking in from the night carrying milkshakes in white paper cups. _Of all things! _It took Mother's stone-faced glare for Parisa to cough down a guffaw.

The milkshakes were passed around the coffee table, and a calm settled as the adults sipped. Many spoonfuls of rice were decimated before someone spoke.

"Tell me something." No-Hair put down his cup and sat back on the sofa. He was the shortest among the four at the table. He was of the normal sort. Hair cut to the scalp, slight sideburns, neither fat nor thin, neither muscular nor skinny. But the matte sheen and sharp gestures of his left hand was distinguishable to Parisa. A teacher in school had the same thing. He said that he had gotten his new arm after he lost his to the uprising in the Eridanus system. It had happened almost five years ago.

"Convince me to."

The man gulped hard on the milkshake.

"So the story goes: Once there was a boy, who lived in a village. He was a shepherd –"

"Give the shepherd story a rest, will you?" The other man said. This was the red headed one. His hair seemed naturally coloured, but natural red-heads were so rare now it was more logical to think that he had had his hair dyed. It was long and wispy, the man's hair. And it hung to the man's shoulders at the very least. _What a show-off._

"I assume both Mr. H and Ryuusei have heard of it?"

Father and Uncle nodded.

"I just can't seem to connect the dots. You certainly placed them far apart." Father intoned to the men on the opposite side.

"We are here to connect them. To aim your course, whence you would fly, thinking, for the paths less trodden, may they be thoroughly forgotten."

"Quite the poet you've turned out to be, Michel," Father said, looking deep into the Red-Head's eyes, not with compassion, yet not with coldness either. It was simple evaluation.

The man looked away in displeasure.

"I take that as a compliment," He said in a soft drawl. "_Que pasa_, pretty?"

Parisa realized the man was speaking to her.

"Don't even try, Michel. My daughter –"

Father stopped short, then waved the unfinished sentence away. He continued, ignoring Parisa, who silently watched and listened from the table.

"I just cannot think of a situation like this that will turn out right."

"This is not the Academy any more, so try to think a little bigger, will you? _Sir_?"

"Point that guilty finger at yourself, Michel. You're the one doing the dirty stuff that no one else has to do, while I, on the other hand, am a successful businessman."

Uncle Hayato coughed in between a sip of milkshake.

"Damn, we even forgot Section One was here. That's what I call being successful in your job. Eh, Ryuusei?"

"Aren't we all."

The mumbling died down among the men for a moment, and they sobered up.

"Why don't I start explaining the crap that is happening now, in simple terms," No-Hair said as Parisa finished off her rice and polished off the last of her fish.

"So firstly, a boy was sent to look after sheep on a faraway hill after wolves attacked and left four farmers from the village dead. They thought the wolf dead, having injured it badly years before. The boy cried out, "The wolf is not dead!" many times over the years, but nobody listened. And there were no attacks. But still the wolf lived, but only the boy knew. So the boy, who saw the wolf lurking somewhere in the woods, went up to it and made friends, believing he could kill it later with a smile in front and a knife behind the back, but he found out something." No-Hair licked his lips.

"It was impossible, to kill the wolf, which now had full grown children, as strong as the old wolf was. The boy grieved in his heart, thinking why had he not come earlier, to kill the wolf when it was still weak and in hiding. Only thing was, the villagers had not found the cave in which the wolf hid. The boy would have stepped over it himself if he had not gotten the wolf to take him there. So the boy, when he came to the cave again he smiled still, but this time he had meat with him, not a knife.

"He could not tell the villagers; they did not believe him. Nor could his brothers help him; they were weak scholars who hated direct action. So he led his band of friends to the travelling weapon-smith, hoping he could convince out of him a good, big bomb to blast all the wolves to hell."

There was silence.

"Does the brother here know about this?" Father asked Uncle Hayato.

"Nope. Not at all. I truly thought the jokes played were part of a plot to break me away from my current job, but I had no wind of the situation at all." Uncle Hayato was just as distracted as Father, rubbing his chin while contemplating the situation.

Parisa hovered over. She had put the dishes in the wash, and was now edging nearer and nearer the milkshakes. She squatted down and took a gulp from Father's cup.

It just like normal milkshake, foamy and sweet, but this was slightly bitter too, and it left a burning sensation in her throat, much like the Burn Bomb sweets Uncle Hayato had given her. Her sight started to blur and lose focus. She took a deep and urged herself to keep her vision steady. She remembered this feeling. She had almost failed a Maths test when she first tried one of those in class.

"Ryuusei, you should have warned the girl."

"No, I am not so mean as to deny a girl what she loves."

"You might just lose your job, allowing children to drink alcohol in front of her father."

"I'm sure my brother would take it in good humour."

"Wrong humour at the wrong time make people lose their jobs _all_ the time."

Her criss-crossing steps and stumbling feet caused the four men to look towards the hallway.

"I must say, our dear Mr. Horie really uses the finest doesn't he? Look how fast she goes."

Parisa hiccuped, and nearly tripped herself as she turned back around. The room was getting blurry, and the lines warped and twisted, before they became too fuzzy to make out. Father had come to catch her, and she melted in his arms, blissfully losing control of her limbs. She vaguely heard the scrap of conversation though.

"Well who ever knew Prof Horie was such a connoisseur. Can't believe it's already been five years since he landed his milkshakes on Eridanus. It feels like my first cup was yesterday. Too bad we weren't his students, else these drinks would probably be free."

"Maybe you report directly to Parangosky as well, then."

"And maybe Mr. H should start making malt milkshakes too."

"Is Parisa really okay like this? She _did_ go quite fast."

"It's better like this, having her asleep. Kids these days. You can't tell what they know and don't know any more."

The others around her nodded, and she lay down heavily on the couch, and slept.

* * *

_The Wolf smiled to Parisa and said, "Que pasa, pretty?"_

_Another Wolf came through the clearing, and said, shaking his head, "I think you should have warned the girl."_

_A third Wolf appeared from the darkness of the cave and howled, "No! It's better this way." _

_Then the hunter came from behind, and shot the Wolves, each one once in the head. _

_Parisa repeated in a limp murmur, "No, it's better this way," and she felt sorry for the wolves. _

"_Why did you kill the Wolves?" she asked. _

"_It's all part of the game, missy."_

"_What game?"_

"_The balancing game, dear."_

"_Why?"_

"_To win the game, you must remain in control."_

"_Why?"_

"_That's just how it's been all along, little missy. Why do you even ask?"_

_Then the hunter faded, and a fox emerged from the quickly dissipating haze, leaping towards Parisa. Her first reaction was to hug it, and it cuddled her back. But it quickly brushed its tail against her and bit her hand. She flung it to the floor, cradling her hurt wrist._

"_Why?"_

_But the willy fox just smiled, and darted past under her, and into the forest._

* * *

"Mr Horie again, huh?"

"Don't tell me you did not expect it. Section Zero knew the rebels even before us, just that they chose not to say. The boy came later. Parangosky just wants to tighten her grip on the Eridanus Section Three subdivision after the disastrous Trebuchet ground op. You know about that one."

Two glasses tinkled as they came together lightly, producing a soft but clear pitch piercing the night's silence.

"He was the best. Probably still is. Why Horie?"

"ONI classified. But we can guess. He _has _done _some _things that worry the ONI on Eridanus."

"So you guys _do_ have something to do with him being here."

"Only half correct. You know how everyone now works from that woman down. He was her operative here from years before. Now that Parangosky's got the chair, Mr Horie is now part of her control umbrella. They want to reign the Section Three here in. Why else would Zero be concerned with Eridanus? Only thing that is stopping her from pulling the plugs is that if Section Three desists here, the ruse is up, and shit will hit. Very hard. That is how precarious the balance is."

Parisa found herself on the reclining chair beside her father.

"I had an inkling, but no clear idea of how bad it was."

"_You_ didn't know? That tells a lot about how different these guys are acting, compared to the last round. They are going to come hard and fast, if Section Three here fails."

"Wonder how much we can expect from those two. It's a big task."

Father released the glass from his grip, and arched backwards onto the sofa. He saw Parisa rub her eyes open.

"Want to go to your room?"

Parisa shook her head sleepily, but got up all the same. Her feet were starting to feel cold, and she wandered towards the stairs.

As she padded her way up, Uncle Hayato's voice seemed to boom and echo throughout the house.

"Will you help?"

There was a long pause. Parisa ground to a halt before the last step, listening for her father's reply.

"Yes. I will."

Parisa felt as if her Dad had just released her, released the house from the web of tension that had been hanging since she got back. She started towards her room again, and upon reaching her bed, she pulled on her socks, rolled up into her blanket and fell promptly asleep.

* * *

Another Chapter. Sorry it took so long! No guarantees the next one will come faster, but I will try my best .


	8. In a Flash

**[Edited April 9 2012: ****edited typos and revised the ending. My bad for posting at 1 am last night without proofreading the last part and missing out stuff. So it was heavily edited. Also edited December 9.] **Exams put me on a short hiatus. But now I'm back to writing. I think we are almost into enemy territory, so... Duck! Shats are gonna' start hittin' the fan! (Oh, and bad marine language in here, so mind your head!) Oh yeah, and Skyrim. Muhh. [ This foreword was written nearly 5 months ago... Well, time does fly. Hope all this research and getting facts straight, fitting it all together like a jigsaw was worth it.] [ And this was written a month ago. Well, at least I said what I wanted to here. This is long enough to be two oneshots anyway. So no apologies.]

**Chapter 7 (Flash forward)**

**0250 Hours, November 18, 2552 (Military Calendar)**

**Sol System. Voi, Kenya. Above The Artifact.**

_/Comlog start;_

_Personal id(42GF3A);/_

_/cmd80/_

[Start transcript]

"Damn, they got a fetish for glassing our planets or what? Up our very last one. Just look."

"This is bullshit. We gonna die in this fuckin' phantom. Elites are gonna sticking us from our behinds. Then stick us again to kill us twice. I bet my ass on that."

"No kiddin'."

"Shut your trap or they really _are_ going to. Especially when they hear the amount of crap you're capable of babbling."

"Then why the fuck are they glassing Earth right in front of our eyes? Might as well have left us down there as well. Hell might be a better place than here."

"Hell is if they do not glass the planet, Marine. Ever encountered those things before?"

"Not at all ma'am. You'd better enlighten me."

"It's worse than you getting your hairy ass chewed off piece by piece by jackals. Worse than that thick skull of yours being drilled to nothing, hole by hole, by Section 3."

"No shit."

"Just talking about it makes me want to hurl. Only I emptied my sodden gut hours before on someone else. Something. Infected. We had to incinerating them. Shoot them and they come back. Just uglier. Fuck that. Ten of us gone before we could close the doors. We watched them go. It was horrible to watch."

"Dammit. Enough to make the CO crack. Damn, you guys hear? This flood bitch is the real deal."

"Shut up Mike. Just shut the hell up."

"Where's all that ODST bravado gone, huh tuxman?"

"Up your arse. It gets worse."

"Yeah right. Nothing gets worse than this. Nothing, man, nothing."

"_zz-_ Elites and _-zz- _agreed to form an allia- _-zzzzz-_ -ships and personn- _-zzz-_ -easefire as of _-zz-_ military time."

"Hell, ma'am, that supposed to be music?"

"To your puny soul. Can it and listen to the radio."

"-all remaining ground personnel to repor- -_zz_- -_ard- -zzz- -Dawn._ I repeat, all -_zzzz_-"

"Elites and humans? Like those funky bastards- well shit."

"Seems like we're shifting course. Seems like we're going back after all."

"I'd face an Elite any day, just don't give me paperwork."

"You're not even worth the paperwork."

"Give me a- holy mother of-"

"Gotta give 'em credit for that. Guess trying to make us shit our pants is an intrinsic alien value."

"But, seems like we're home, wherever that is."

"Hell we are, goddamn. I need some fuckin' sleep."

"You'll get it when you're dead, Marine. Now move out!"

_/cmd70/_

_/Comlog end;/_

Parisa bailed out last in line behind her marines. She saluted an Elite pilot who was watching, but he made no response. The phantom picked itself up with a small bow and hummed its way across to the other side of the cavernous Covenant hangar bay.

_Fuckin' Elites_. The phrase made sense yesterday, and it did today. A mere holo of one of their hulking kind was more than enough to make her trigger finger twitch.

In the dim hangar bay, she was slow to recognise the bulk in front of her. She needed the whispers of her marines who had started to crowd together to provoke her imagination into seeing the outlines of a UNSC ship. It was a frigate with its name printed on its hull: _Forward Unto Dawn_.

Parisa's instinct told her not to linger on the surface of a Covenant ship, so she formed up her remaining company of a hundred and two to march into the frigate's hangar. No guards were waiting for them at the airlock. Not a surprise, though. Protocol had but all been lost in the past few weeks. As the human fleet was gradually broken apart and laid waste to, it made less and less sense to stick to tradition when there were so few people left to follow it. Parisa could count (even name) all the remaining human warships by her fingers, and it was not difficult to map out all ground units that were left. Of all the ground forces deployed from the African base, only her company remained fully functional, but that status, Parisa knew, was a threadbare definition that hid how much of a skeleton her company was. She herself was ready to collapse any time soon too. What saved her company was dastardly luck. Mozambique was far South and the Covenant had just started pouring in when the flood hit. They were at the best place at the best time to escape massacre. 'Best' in this case was relative. Their situation was bad enough, just not as glorious a shit-hole as other places. That had saved her company's collective ass. The Home Fleet's attached brigade 'worked' too, but it was spread so thin across the world they could only serve as preliminary damage report. The Army now largely served as support for Fleet forces after being hit again and again in Africa, losing two thirds of their men there. Another lucky "battalion" to generally survive the onslaught unscathed was Flight Ops, but they were already so few to begin with in the first place that they did not really count.

For the rest who were not so lucky... She had heard reports of ODSTs being wiped out by the hundreds as they dropped, and camps being bombarded by Brute cannons and reduced to just barely enough men to fill a platoon. The marines who were now bustling around the _Forward Unto Dawn_ were either those with working BASE Comms, or were those fortunate enough to hitch a ride up into space on a Pelican, much like herself. The rest still down there on the African continent were probably already lost to plasma or flood.

She pushed through a crowd of marines with a violet trim on their chest plates in a corridor as she looked for accommodations with some of her marines. _Violet..._ That was the famous trim that ground forces attached to Core World defence wore. The best the marine corps has to offer. _Earthies._ She gave them a pass; it was usually more difficult talking to Earthies if you were an off-world marine. Arrogant bastards much like Elites, except you understood very well why they were such huge ass holes, which only made you hate them even more.

"Move it, move it!" Parisa intoned to her weary marines who had put down their sacks to take a break from all the heavy lifting. No, she did not want Earthies to remember her unit as weak, even though it probably would not matter in a few days, after everyone was blown to pieces by one thing or another. But it mattered to her _now_.

A few Earthies turned to her. Tall and muscular, all at least a head and an extra boot sole taller than her. HQ battalion, she footed guessed. Toughest marines out of a 50,000 strong Core World Force. Damned bad luck if one were to ever pick a fight with them. Any one of them could easily be a mixed martial artist champ or a heavyweight title holder. Both, if you had your lucky horseshoe.

"Hey, here's a cutie," one of them slurred from beside the door by which Parisa had just entered.

She resisted the impulse to turn and give them a staring down, not wanting to be baited, and quickened her pace with her marines in tow.

"Hey, lemme see your face for a bit." Parisa was jerked backwards with a crude pull, and she almost fell. A twenty kilo pack was not the easiest of things to carry when combat fatigue set in.

She was spun around to face a dozen crude faces, each weathered down so much that you would not tell the difference between a rock and them even if you put them side by side.

"Damn killjoy. Lieutenant. First." The one who spoke raised an eyebrow and cocked a jeering smile at Parisa. He towered over her, blotting out the deck lights.

His gaze hovered on her insignia, before it travelled to her face and stopped there. Parisa held the gaze for a long time.

He turned his face up at Parisa's troops.

"Mind if we borrow your girl for a while, boys? Share some of your fun?"

"You don't talk to my CO like that, dirtman."

A few of her marines had crowded behind Parisa.

"Aww, come _on_. You kids have had her long enough." Parisa watched as the Earthies sneered collectively. She was watching the situation turn from bad to worse. _Fuck. I should have seen this coming. Rank is as useful as a cheesestick nowadays._

"Must I keep you boys under a leash at all times?" Parisa bellowed at her own marines, but the message was meant for the Earthies as well.

Neither side made a move; but the air hardened. It had become almost dense enough to float in despite the artificial gravity. Both sides were almost face to face. Cocked chins and clenched fists were about to clash, and Parisa had lost control. _Dammit. Gotta wish I were a Spartan sometimes. _She made her last bet to cool the situation. She sucked in cold recycled air and projected her voice.

"Marines, stand dow-" She never had the chance to finish the command. She was tugged behind her marines' line, and the brawl began. She was little use in hand-to-hand combat. She was too light to throw a good punch, and skill did not really matter no matter what drill instructors said. You only needed size and reflex. She had the latter, but she could not say the same for size. She dodged as someone lunged at her, tried for a quick chop to the neck, but the muscle was rock solid. She doubted she did much to the soldier.

It was a free for all. One on either side would be pressed to a bulkhead and whacked hard if he wasn't quick enough to kick the other back. Sometimes fights were internal, what with marines setting scores straight and playing up old grudges. There were no spectators.

The clipped sound of heavy boots permeated the corridor, punching through the raucous free-for-all. An armoured giant turned the corner. Few brawlers heard the Spartan coming, but the glint of the golden visor and two meters of leaf green ceramic armour was enough to raise any soldier's head. The sight of the opalescent green giant was enough to stop most marines in their tracks. Everyone on deck stood to attention out of reflex. Even those who were folded on the floor struggled to straighten up.

_The Spartans commanded respect, I'd give you that_. She herself seemed to straighten somewhat as he passed the saluting marines.

She had seen a Spartan on Earth before. Once, briefly, near a sandy beach while the fight was in New Mombasa. He gave her the same impression as one did months ago. A natural soldier. Fierce warriors to be recorded down in myths and legends. Not that he wasn't _already_ legendary.

His boots made a muffled thumping sound, very unlike marine boots, which had a succinct "thuk-thuk-thuk" bite of sole on metal. His wide gait and off-pitch boots would have been instinctively recognized as 'Elite' on any ship, Parisa realised.

He stopped in front of Parisa, last in line.

"Any difficulties, Lieutenant Hanabusa?" the Spartan asked. It was hard to tell what rank he was. Parisa spotted a small black tag that read S-117. Sierra 117. The same one as before.

He spun around to face the thirty odd marines lined up against the two sides of the wall, and growled, "Dismissed." The metallic voice than emanated from his helmet was more than enough incentive for the marines to obey.

They departed in a line, taking whatever they had together with them.

Parisa let out a trickle of a withdrawn breath and gratefully leaned back against the wall. She felt the stickiness of half-dried blood in her hair as it contacted the bulkhead.

"I owe you another, Chief," she smiled lopsidedly at the visored helmet, unsure of how she should react to the Chief's intervention. She did not know if he even remembered who she was, or about the time she had saved the men in her sector. _Did he read off my name tag? But that was too quick; he spoke before he turned to me. But Spartans are really fast, aren't they? He probably did turn under the helmet. The suits must have electronic tagging. That's must have been how he knew my surname._

The Master Chief's initials have been marked down at least once a day in fleet-wide reports since the war dropped in on Earth. His presence, and even lack thereof in the later parts of the month caused such big disturbances that half the fleet and ground forces' officers knew where he was at any given time. _Saving a few marines is probably what he does for his morning warm-up._

He was bent down so low, so close her that she was breathing right onto his visor. A thin layer of mist formed for a microsecond before fading. Her palms were moist under her gloves, and her knees were buckling under the intense gaze that she _felt_. _Seems like the old guys were right. Maybe you _could_ feel_ _someone taking aim at you._ She imagined an x-ray passing right through her flesh and through her ribs, heart and lungs, spine, and out from her posterior armour plate. She felt it deep in her bones.

Yet she felt a warm comfort too, something like what a parent would give. What she felt... was it concern? Maybe Spartans were less machine than she thought they were. Or, more likely than not, her judgement on human feelings were so skewered after endless nights hugging her rifle to sleep that anyone who looked at her for more than a second was a potential lover, parent or friend. Still, the Spartan was more human than the Corps gave him credit for. _I am currently _so _qualified to say that._

There was no wind in the ship, only recycled air leaking from vents on the side of corridors. It was not right, Parisa thought, not being able to have gusts of wind blow gently onto our faces. _We humans are too used to being on hard ground._ She said it with pride as a soldier, not disdain. She also thought how lucky humanity was to have the Master Chief.

And so he left without another word. Parisa wanted to say something, anything, but her tongue seemed tied down, and nothing came out. His towering back, as he slowly walked away, seemed too imposing to call out to as well.

_And what would the use of that be? What I really need now is rest._

* * *

The news was out. The good news: they had five hours of easy rest without Brutes ships hammering the fleet left, right and centre. The bad news was more chummy. After that five, they would be out in the fields again, betting all their lives on a single chance: that humanity could still fight what was coming, be it flood or covenant. The _Forward Unto Dawn_ and the _Aegis_ were to travel through the portal to where the fight was to be, and her company was going in with the ships.

Actually, news could not go much worse than this. More news was good news in the theatre of war. There was nothing much left to report in terms of bad news, anyway. News that still came meant that someone was still in control, that you weren't the last officer in the fleet. That was the intended effect. And it worked perfectly.

Parisa managed a full two hours' sleep in her cot before a vile, spitting Brute tormented her awake. She gave the cot to an ODST who was lying on the floor, stark naked except for a pair of thermal underwear, eyelids fluttering in the boreal air. An achievement, as there was no heating in the hangar bays-turned-campsite. She wore full fatigues plus a vest and she still felt the chill biting at her ankles. _Some bravado men show even in desperate times._ She threw her blanket on the man.

"No sick leave today, marine," she grunted.

The man saluted while still stuck flat to the floor.

"Yes Ma'am!" he barked back, before hurriedly hopping into the cot, a rare commodity on the ship. The hangar bay had less than ten. Some were moved down from their rooms by technicians for themselves, others moved down by marines for their COs.

She palmed her Tacpad. Mail and memos were so flying around, but they now came in trickles, usually never more than three at a time. The senders were also becoming less and less varied. Relevant paperwork was now in a past age. She could now recognize all the names the mails were being sent out to. Not all of the names she saw still had an owner. Neither did the yet-to-be-recommissioned AIs that now crowded the nets. All of them VIP evacuees on ONI stealth ships that were rumoured to house black-ops Spartans.

Parisa actually felt sorry for them. Especially the world AIs; the smart ones. If you'd ever talked to one, they could talk with such blistering emotion that you were left thinking why weren't they the leaders of humanity when what we got were drab politicians in grey suits. Callista, Eridanus II's resident smarty, was always over-exerting herself. Military commanders got live updates twenty-four seven, until one commander told her to shut the fuck up. She flared from red to green above the holo projector, and argued that if commanders did not get the updates, then nobody would. She would get herself involved in all sorts of going-ons, like helping fix a stack error in prefab farms, down all the way to ploughing a field when an operator was sick. Parisa remembered when Callista had popped up in her home network to tip her off on a General's unannounced visit to promote her to a company CO.

Callista was one of the few AIs who had resisted ONI attempts to extract her from her planet. Her emotional logic had swamped her objective logic, turning her rampant, so it was reported. She was glassed along with the planet she loved.

Almost every remaining ship now stored an on-board AI, though most were preserved in stasis. Most frigates could not handle smart AIs for extended periods of time, especially not when fuel was limited. AIs gulped down huge amounts of energy; just to run them at full iteration for an hour could cost an entire capital city's daily consumption for a week. Only a few were still up and about now, but when a battle started once again they would be reactivated.

Parisa reached the canteen. Lights dimmed, it was chock full of marines – many snoozing on tables, chairs and some on the floor. No one paid her any attention. And she did well not to pay them any attention as well. The grime and stink, if she thought about it, would put her off food for days.

The counter was unmanned, so she vaulted over to get herself something. Nothing in the trays either. The kitchen was her last bet on this ship then.

Bright florescent lights flooded every inch of table, cupboard and freezer in this sparkle-clean territory of the cooks. Parisa ran a hand over the nearest counter. As smooth as the last Stratovarious she played, borrowed from a marine lucky enough to have one. Everything was white in the kitchen, just like the cooks' uniform and the coffee they produced. Possibly the cleanest part of the ship, and only because there would always be someone to blame for an expeditious spread of stomach aches otherwise.

There was nothing that did not need to be cooked in the freeze – except for a hoard of ice-cream in little cubic containers, each meticulously sorted out row by row into their flavours and stocked so that every last flavour row had one more container than the others to the left of it. How the chefs did it was a mystery, but even to the trespasser, it was beautiful to see order manifested in neat rows once in a while.

She slipped a hand through the retainer field and plucked out a container from the freezer's cold yet protective embrace. A film of water droplets formed on the plastic shell which harboured the cream-coloured delicacy inside.

Parisa always had had a soft spot for ice-cream. Then again, surely nothing could be better than a cup of cloud-white heaven before the derelict vessel she was on board headed for total annihilation. Her superiors wouldn't hear about her stealing ice-cream, of course. For the most part, they were all dead.

In any case, ice-cream remained ice-cream, and it was still heaven no matter where it was to be had. Her first love was ice-cream. But it was her dear John that she had shared it first with. Heaven wasn't the same without him.

It was that delicious little knack for confectionery that John had that made him seem less callous to Parisa than he did to the rest of the school who only saw a bully growing in him. John was devilishly good at making things work for him, and just like how he could pull gravballs down full court, his desserts were always 'full court'.

_Oh yes, I had almost forgotten how much I loved food. Probably what got me mixed up with these warmongering mutts anyway._

She dug out a small trench in the vanilla ice-cream and put the spoonful onto her palate. No, not even the Admiral's ship's chefs could make the same miracle that Parisa experienced – what, thirty six years ago?

"Space travel. Makes you feel so much older than you really are," Parisa grumbled at the ice-cream. She was barely thirty five in real time, what with cryo and slipspace being her temporary coffin after Eridanus. Sure, the ice-cream was great, but it lacked a personal touch. _Sentimentality, Parisa. Or was it nostalgia?_ There would be time to mull this out later. Given there was one.

She retreated from the freeze and plunked her aching behind onto a counter. Her feet could not reach the floor. Being short was one thing. _Think Napoleon._ Looking like a fresh OCS graduate _and _being short was much, much worse. Not so long ago on her last R&R back on some edge world the fleet stopped by for repairs a few years back, local infantry were still trying to pick her up, only to be dismayed by her officer's tattoo. Her small size, granted to her by her mainly Asian descent, did help her in the squeeze-and-wiggle obstacle courses though. Most marines who were larger had to take more strenuous routes, and thus were more prone to injury. Not that Parisa hadn't had her fair share, easy tight-space courses not withstanding. In field obstacle courses she _died_. Sometime nearly literally, when the sergeants hit her with tranquillizer pellets which knocked her out for a beat, and leaving her to wake up in pain on whatever she collapsed on. She usually had to pull a few accumulated favours from the large guys to settle her on grass and not mud or stones, which would be always be sticky or scorching no matter which course she woke up from. Luckily men liked it cute.

That was the first tried confession, being cute. Wasn't her fault, not for her lack of trying to be otherwise. She had tried different things, like tying it up, gelling her hair into a square, even shaving (her head hair). But there was always _something_ that _someone_ liked with a petite body, it seemed. And it annoyed the hell out of Parisa. Of course, her being top in tactical did much _not_ to help.

The second confession. In a sky full of guys, Parisa oft wondered why she had never had a proper sexual encounter before. Was she hiding behind a cloud of memories and dreams? Or why in the sea of men she was left stranded in her own kingdom by the sea, not by any fault of her own, again? Or maybe it _was_ her own, just that she never could reconcile the fact with the nameless narrator of his story centuries back. Probably she just never tried. Poe himself would not be able to give himself a proper answer, nor for her.

It did not feel like she had been imprisoned by her experience. Instead it was more of a loss of heart. Content to wallow in the past, she never could bring herself to love as she loved John again. Another loss, another disappearance, would tear out her heart and rip her soul into two. It already did once. But that had become a secondary pain in a few years. What hurt her, increasingly so, was her fading memories of John. _I'm just like an old woman living the last of her years after all her family has died. What the hell am I living for anyway? Forgotten as well. Dementia has sure hit me early._

Regret, regret, regret. She would give all she could offer to have a moment with John again.

Parisa finished off the last of her ice-cream, scraping the corners perfectly clean with the square edge of her plastic spoon. _Maybe the chefs aren't to blame. The texture and taste were perfectly balanced. The only problem was that the ice-cream reeked of fabricated milk compounds._ The dry after 'taste' of the milk compounds were starting to set in. She wished she were back on Eridanus. _Not the time for this, Parisa!_ was what she would have thought, had it been a scant month earlier. In recent weeks she had come to terms with her dreams of the sunny days of Eridanus, the iridescent Lake Gusev. _Lake Gusev. The one and only._

But it was no more, living only in Parisa's dreams, a fairy tale that choose the wrong owner. _Gone_, Parisa breathed as she peered into the depths of the ice-cream container. She put the spoon back into the container and flicked it into a nearby recycle bin. She reached down her vest for an amulet, one from an ancient, long-forgotten memory. It was a coin, nickel, of the old millennia. It was _half_ a coin, to be precise. The actual coin had been divided into two, one face shorn off the other. She had the heads, which she rubbed with a thumb, feeling its uneven bumps caress her battle-worn fingers. She could hardly feel it under her calluses. The tails part was artificial; John's handiwork. You would never tell the difference until you held the amulet. Warm from Parisa's chest on the metallic side and unassumingly cool to the touch on the plasti-alloy side. Where was the tails half? Parisa had never seen John wear his half after _that_ incident.

_Not that she saw him much after that, anyway. _He fell so sick soon afterwards. Nothing could save him – the 'disease' was genetic, they said (who cares who 'they' were?) and that it had no cure. To hell with doctors and their shams and shamelessness, and their potty magic that they advertised, "Could save anyone, if you had the heart". _They_ needed more heart, the prigs. Doctors were such hypocrites, really. Pay to cure a sickness, was it? They wouldn't give a damn if you were cured or not, or even sick in the first place. They only cared about the money. Parisa was starting to think military medics were the best doctors around _They_ were the real doctors. The ones that patched you up no matter the pain or work. Fixed pay, plus medals if they saved a whole bunch of people, marines, civvies or otherwise. Their job was just to save, and money wasn't included in the equation.

The tiny medallion of John's was like his heart, trapped in a mean, lean body, but full of meaning. They first called him 'the Bull' at first for his athleticism. It turned into 'bully' as people saw him winning all the games and competitions they threw at him, not just physical ones at that. Teachers banned him for the official games, saying with a kindly look, "John, give others a chance." For recess games, children ousted him, or made him referee all the time, else they would not play. So John fit into the crevice that the school had so well engineered for him, while he kept his silence and peace. At least as much as the other children let him keep.

_Didn't I tell myself to lay off on the past?_ Parisa needed a break urgently. She did not know if she would survive the next drop onto the Halo. And here she was going over her childhood in infinite loops.

"Lieutenant Hanabusa."

Her TACPAD made her jump. In a pristine kitchen, on board a military frigate housed in a huge, protecting Covenant carrier, things could still scare you.

"Report to the armoury to be briefed on weapon load-out and strategy immediately. AI generated notes included."

Paris's eyes skimmed to the kitchen entrance. Nobody. She gently plied open the fridge door and secured three more cubes of ice cream. They would keep cold for at least a couple of hours in their insulating warped polymer cases.

Hopefully shipboard ice-cream would not be the last thing she eats.

* * *

"Did someone forget the lights?" Parisa asked as she entered the armoury. The long room was pitch black, and the only light came from the opened door. Crates were stacked along the walls, going from small arms to rocket launchers. She could make out a few silhouettes against the wall at the far end.

"No, but you arrived at the correct time."

The lights snapped on in a flash.

"Awww, shit!" someone cried out.

Parisa could see a tight group of marines and officers huddled around a pile of non-standard-looking scopes on the counter.

"And that's the bad news. You can't switch from unlit environments to lit environments. It will blind you. You would have to give these new scopes time to switch. About two seconds. It's a change in material physics, so the scientists tell me, so don't try to improve it with the sticks and stones you find on this ship; it will probably just break."

Parisa had joined the group now, and she could see that the scopes weren't standard UNSC ordinance. Aside from standard UNSC catches, they also had Covenant weapon attachment hooks that would fit them onto carbines and beam rifles.

Parisa realised the person speaking was Admiral Hood. Surprised to see the Admiral in person, Parisa took a second to stand to. The Admiral gave a warm nod and said, "Well, Lieutenant, try it for yourself. You choose whether or not to give it to your men."

The Admiral saluted to the group, turning to everyone in turn and gave each person a fortifying stare in the eye. Parisa could not help but stand straighter as he passed.

As the Admiral passed, she could distinctly tell the lines and creases that seemed carved into Admiral Hood's face. Each wrinkle he had only seemed to increase his prestige around anyone, especially in his white admiral's uniform.

The moment passed, and the awe died down into simple gratefulness for having such a man on the right side. _Moral support is real then._ The room was abuzz again.

"Damn, the Admiral has a way with briefings. Not even four minutes."

"Discounting how he suddenly switched on the lights."

Parisa was tossed a scope by a sergeant.

"Try it out, ma'am."

It had a flexiform outer material, designed to wrap around any equipment. Another quip from the Science division. Parisa looked through. Everything looked more contrasted, and the usually blinding strip of light installed in the frigate were less glaring. It felt as if someone had splashed real colours onto the world. She looked at the sergeant. FOF tag glowing green. The tag on the table flashed red. Amazing technology cooked up by the tech division again. The FOF tagging was brilliantly executed and implemented on this scope.

"Highly addictive," she concluded as she handed the scope back to the sergeant.

"Well, ma'am, if you like it enough, we have plenty to pass around to your boys."

Parisa mulled over the idea of unpredictable scopes in the battlefield. _But the FOF tagging. Would be good in unfamiliar terrain._

"I think I will take a crate for my boys, sarge."

"Okie-do. Just sign out in your 'pad."

The intercom buzzed.

"Sargent Koffi, prepare the weapons stack I just sent you. Put them in one crate, I will carry it all at once. Down in two," a gravelly voice emanated from the right corner of the armoury. Parisa could not help noticing that it was distinctly the Master Chief's.

"Will do, sir."

The intercom's red eye turned off after the message.

The sergeant checked his terminal, and started unloading crates from their shelves and repackaging them into a new metal container. Parisa had finished stacking her own equipment into two cases. She tried lifting one off the rubberised deck. _Too heavy. _She had anticipated the scopes to be heavy from her first feel, but not so ridiculously heavy. She must have lost her touch with her senses and misjudged the scopes' weights. Looking around, she saw no carts, only a heavy lifting droid. But her two cases of scopes did not warrant those. Now she would have to repack them and make two trips.

Parisa wiped the sweat from her brow and straightened up from her squat – in time to peer into the Master Chief's depolarised helmet. For a second she thought she saw a familiar face wrapped in the dark interior of the helmet. The Spartan brought up the helmet's polarised gold tint almost immediately, before Parisa had time to look at his face properly. She had the weakening sensation of déjà vu race down her spine, and she was caught in between feeling that she had dreamed of this before, and that this was a situation she had been caught in before. _Looking down on me from above, this sensation, bursting full of hope, yet infinitely pierced with despair._ Parisa had to fight to catch her breath.

"Allow me, ma'am," he said looking down at her as his index finger hooked the case away from her sweaty palm. _That was about twenty bloody kilos._ The Spartan did not break a sweat. He flicked shut the other case still on the floor and locked it in one lightning movement, and piled it on his already-waiting crate the the sergeant had prepared for the platoon. The Spartan grabbed the crate by its handles on either side and hefted. It left the ground silently in one fluid, effortless motion that Parisa would never have thought possible if she had not seen it done today.

"Where to, ma'am?" Nothing signalling the feat that had just been performed. It struck Parisa as ghostly, and apprehension tickled her outermost senses.

"Aft, section two-two bravo." The Master Chief turned the corner with a smart flick of the heels.

"Chief." He set the crate onto the deck before setting the two cases of scopes upright, side by side at the corner of her company's compartment.

"Ma'am." The way the Spartan said it as a statement made her feel even more unsure and curious at the same time. Parisa froze for four heartbeats, each falling with a reverberating _thump-thump_. _Thump-thump._ _Thump-thump. Thump-thump._

"Ma'am?" This time it came on softer.

"Unvisor, please, Chief." It must have been Parisa's subconscious speaking, because she had no idea as to why she did. The small muscle under her voice-box had told her to do it, just like that. Spontaneous. Her brain was still feeling blood-drained from déjà vu. Maybe her muddled mind suffered more from the cold in the corridors than she had anticipated. Now that blood starting to flush up to her cold cheeks, she had an intense scratchy pain that she felt she had to bear no matter what happened. It was something like a fee for asking. Shame and pain, point taken. But she could not shy away from asking; her curiosity would not be quelled with anything less that seeing the face under the helmet.

"Pardon, ma'am?" The Chief's returned in its full coarseness. _Almost like an awkward cough?_ The Chief's uncharacteristically uncertain response only inflamed her irrational need to know. She took a gamble. _Faith guide me._

"I'm pulling rank Chief." She gulped. She felt like she had just swallowed her own heart. It was not easy to pull rank on someone deadlier than the entire UNSC put together. Parisa did not need augmented eyes to see how the Chief boarded up.

"Ma'am." The Chief with his stoic response again. _Not today. Not when we are all going to hell whether we like it or not._

"You heard me, Chief. I need to know the person I am fighting with."

There was a long silence. Only the barely audible articulation of the MJOLNIR's armour plates were heard. Parisa stared through the visored helmet but saw nothing except her own reflection. _How did the Spartans live without anyone giving them eye-to-eye, face to face encouragement? Was everyone already dead to them? Would death be the same to them?_

The Master Chief reached up for his helmet's latch and broke open the seals. The armour hissed as the internal air cycle was disrupted. The Spartan underneath emerged from behind a puff of condensed mist. A grimace was not what she expected. _Did Spartans hate open air so much?_

"Ma'am." The huge _person_ who stood in front of her was looked down. His short hair was almost completely bleached white, his complexion fairer than Norwegian models. A jolt of recognition hit her hard from behind. The freckles. _What in the world was – _It was an unmistakable map. Like how the maps that she had studied and committed to memory before a bloody battle were now ghosts that haunted her, this one also clung firmly to the recesses of her mind. She had dreamt about this map earlier, longer, and more than she had for any other. She tried reaching up to touch the man's face, but he caught her hand halfway, and returned it to her side. She blinked, and saw her eyes blur from welling up tears. All the old wounds her heart bore, all those she thought had healed, no, _hardened_, after all these years out in the battlefield, were starting to split open. Every heartbeat seemed to feel more painful than the last.

"_John_."

"Ma'am." The Spartan rocked her shoulder gently with an armoured hand. The armour on her fatigues felt unworldly at this moment – _After so long? _Parisa choked on a hiccup.

_No stop saying "ma'am" over and over just say my name just say you are John and say you know me saymynamelikeyouusedto – _

"Ma'am. I am Sierra one-one-seven, Master Chief Petty Officer of the United Nations Space Command Navy, not John."

He looked straight ahead, eyes with the glazed look of soldiers who have seen it all. He blinked at the end before turning to face Parisa.

"Lieutenant, this," John reached for the chain around his neck and tore it away, breaking the chain and sending small metal rings cascading onto the deck, "is a lucky charm from a while back."

It wasn't a while. It was decades. Decades spent together with the token, decades of vitality imbued into it from whatever the war left over to the Spartan. Parisa carefully reached for her own, hiding in her left thigh pocket, and gripped it hard, almost out of breath. The tails half of her own half-coin glimmered softly in the harsh ship lighting. The last doubt she had about John was erased as the Spartan pressed the token into her right palm. It was shaking as much as it did the first time she fired a rifle.

As she slowly clasped it in her fingers, a singular tear drop rolled down her face. She knew that it was John, the John she knew years back. What hurt her was his denial, his coldness. How long had it been since he could have contacted her. He could have chosen to tell her the other time at New Mombasa. But he did not. The two half-coins were finally reunited, held now in her two hands, but they felt strangely empty.

"I was told not to make a girl a promise I cannot keep."

Parisa sucked in through her nose, clearing it of mucus, and rubbed away the tears from her eyes. She retracted inwards with a scared whimper. _Had I lost John a second time?_

"_Shikashi otōto wa_," the Spartan started, massive gauntlet still on her shoulder, "_anata wo issho ni, mada koko ni aru_."

His eyes bored holes in hers. _Yes, those were his hazel eyes._ Unwavering, they meant exactly what he had said. Parisa understood him perfectly through his imperfect Japanese.

"And you will always be, as long as you never forget."

Parisa looked down at her own boots, and squeezed her eyes shut. She did not want the image of John to disappear ever again.

A new tear drop joined into the first's trail down her cheek. Parisa quenched a rising sob.

She heard the soft clipping of John's boots getting farther and farther away, receding rapidly after he turned out of the section.

She slowly relaxed her eyes, and they opened by a seam. His boots were gone. It took all her strength to look up, to dispel all hopes that he would still be there, smiling warmly as he once had thirty years ago in front of the sparkling waters of Lake Gusev. He was gone. Parisa's side fell onto the bulkhead, on which she thumped her barely clenched fist. Weakly at first, but with growing strength, and she pounded it until her entire arm was numb.

She felt the salty tang of tears and mucus in her mouth, but it could not bother her. Pressing on the bulkhead for support, she slid down to the floor and hugged her knees. All those years that have passed in a flash came crashing down on her. She had completed her decades long marathon, and was panting, gasping, for respite. Runs always feel worse after completing them, not when doing them. All her eyes could see were floating images of John and herself under the artificial Elysium sun.

She paged all the section leaders still under her command to collect the scopes. _They would see me on the floor, hugging myself like a lost child. Pull yourself together._

But for her leaded knees and ravaged heart, Parisa felt that sitting was not so bad an option after all.

* * *

Oh damn that took a long time. That's all I have to say. Hope you enjoyed and would continue waiting for the next chapter!


	9. Preparations

**[Edited Dec 10 2012]**

Jeez, how do I put this. I'm right in the middle of my secondary/middle/college/whadevayoucallem finals, but here I am writing. I should be studying like a shiat just like everyone else but here I am slacking off. My excuse is that I am losing some steam, but that seems like a weak argument for writing right into the night (It's 3.30am here, probably 4.00 when I finally post). Physics and Biology and then Math in less than two days. Sometimes I wonder what I am doing (or rather, not doing) with my life. And the thing is, this wasn't even part of the plan. I already have the next chapter halfway done, but then my com had to die, hard disk crashing and all, so I sent it to repair. Then my eyes got sore and my fingers itchy, so here is a short work inspired by _mes examens_. Love from the depths of worksheets and notes.

**Chapter 8**

**March Twenty-second, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Levin street, Public Library, Basement 2.**

_Newton's second law states that the acceleration 'a' of the body is directly proportional to the net force 'F' working on it, is in the same direction of the net force, and is inversely proportionate to the mass 'm' of the body, i.e. F=ma._

Parisa blinked blankly at the line of text she had just read. _What did I just read? _She had to scroll back up to remind herself which topic she was on. _Right, kinematics._ She scrolled back down to read the same lines once again. They looked suspiciously familiar, as if... she had read them before, somewhere, in a dream...

_You did, Parisa.__A few seconds ago._ She sighed inwardly and leaned her full weight onto her chair, dangling her head over the backing, blowing air out through her mouth. Looking up, she could see through the translucent fibreglass, in between two bundles of wiring, that someone was standing directly above her.

The shadows the two feet cast were too indistinct to make out whether the person was guy or girl. _Who are you up there? And what is your purpose? _Parisa thought that was worthy of a quote. She added, _Are you man or woman? Have you come to study as well? _That came out bad. _Tsk. Unquoteworthy_. The shadow turned heels and stepped away, and the dark footprints receded into the distance. Parisa straightened up and stretched towards the sky. _Ceiling. What amI thinking?_

Parisa groaned and flicked herself back into a haunch and breathed in deep. Her sight sharpened and her mind's fog lifted slightly. But the words in front of her were still a blur. Parisa stared blankly at each word that came across her sight, not comprehending what any one of them meant. Blink. _What was I doing again? Oh, that's right, I was doing Physics. _Parisa let out the breath in a long wheeze. She slumped on her chair closed her eyes.

_Here I am, trapped underground in this library, by my own accord, and I cannot study. I should have started earlier than this. _Her conscience replied with a smug "You don't say" before also disappearing like her comprehension skills. More like shut down, though. _They betray me at crucial times, and come right back on when the danger's past._ Parisa pinched the bridge of her nose. She was tired.

The test was tomorrow. Tomorrow! It was not as if Parisa forgot, it was a simple_ passes too fast.__But in any case, I have to get all this down right here, right now. _Home was the bane of study, she found. _For one, brother would be disturbing. It was his duty in life, he had said. What an idiot. Covert worked well with him in that job of his. Take the 'C' away and he did it even better. I admit I hate his spiders. They were made so real that they would have been, if not for their unbreakable alloy build. Parisa shuddered. Who in the world makes these spider things? I would like to find them and give them a punch in the face for being such asses for making these spider toys._

_Sheesh, I should be studying. But another reason why her home would be a disaster for study was her classmates. Their overhead conversations on the net would either depress her or engross her. Either way, better staying in the confines of the library, where the net was shut out of the door. This was the best place to be studying at, without distractions._

_Yet what in the world am I doing now. Explaining things to myself that I already know about. What was the use of coming here anyway. In the end I don't even get to chat on the net. Well, pretending to study won't do me any good. That said, might as well rest a while. Then again..._

_Study? What for? It's only a test. Which I already can ace. With my eyes closed._

_Newton's Laws? Don't make me laugh. Got them down pat._

_Are you laughing at me?_

_Haha._

_Maybe._

Parisa felt a tug on her shoulder. A sharp intake of cool air, and she was wide awake. She sat up with a jolt. _How long?_ She saw the librarian, an elderly woman with greying hair who yet stood as straight as a stick, give her small smile.

"I thought that an hour should have been enough, dear," the librarian said. Parisa tried gathering her wits to mumble a 'thank-you', but her lips were still asleep. She nodded gratefully instead. The librarian smiled again before departing.

Parisa looked down at her school shirt. A small puddle of drool had collected. Instantly irked out, Parisa strode into the ladies to clean herself up.

She did so, and looked into the mirror before she exited. A few strands of stray hair had been pulled out of her clip, somehow. _They did that whenever she wasn't looking, cheeky hairs. _She rearranged them before drying her hands. She saw the time on her wrist-com. Seven already!

Parisa jumped. _Wait, mom is off, and dad has left. Takuma couldn't care less. _She calmed down a little. All she had to do now was hope her parents had not called to check on her. Since she was underground with no net connection, a call home would not have been automatically redirected to her wrist-com as she had reconfigured the computer at home to do the moment her mother and father were gone. But since there was no influx of messages telling her she had missed calls, she had nothing to worry about. Probably.

She was out of the library. Parisa hefted her bag, leading the left strap over her shoulder, and dusted down her skirt. No calls from her parents. She could fake her location if they called any time soon, now that she was out. _Another useful thing from John. _Parisa sighed in relief.

_But this means that my Physics... Aww who gives a unicorn about the tests anyway. Not as if anyone remembers what you get. If even I can't remember what I got for my last test, who would? And it's just one test. The lessons have been understandable as well, so I should be able to scrape at least a B. Maybe with a plus too._

Parisa started her twenty minute walk back home in the darkening Eridanus sky. Most tests had already finished a few weeks back, only Physics was delayed. So her club had decided to continue with the three-year-old tradition of holding an annual trip out of Elysium just before spring came. Parisa pictured the scene, and laughed out loud. It would be fun. _But who could I call out to go with me? Takuma? Nah. Maybe... _One particularly interesting possibility started forming at the back of her head, and it brought a triumphant smile to her face.

She knew who to get.

* * *

Meh. A weak piece. But good enough a filler for a two-hour work. And to all gals out there, a poll. Is this how any of you study? As a guy, I wouldn't know firsthand, even if I were gay ~just sayin~. Next chapter will be the start of something new (mentioned by Parisa above!) Hope you liked this short one.


	10. Auroras

**[Edited Sept 3 2012: Minor change to include glasses for next chapter at the last part of this chapter. Also added much new content there. Edited****Sept 7 2012: Minor changes to fill in info gap when Parisa is asking John out. Edited Dec 18. Cleaned 'er up, I did.]**

Whee, holidays! I finally get a few hours to write this. Only sad thing is that after this month long break we immediately have exams. Sigh. Now that I have recovered my files, I could finally get down to finishing this chapter. Well, just a thought, but I am starting to get the feeling that I am writing a plot for a light novel. Don't ask how I arrived at this conclusion, I have forgotten. Maybe. Its just that the way this flows, and my publishing chapter by chapter, introducing new characters in each one, is really not like how normal texts flow. Oh well. Can't be everything at the same time. In any case, enjoy this chapter!

NB: You may want to read chapter 5 again and see if can sense a more contained vibe from it, and 6 as well, as I have refined the story. Every sentence and word counts towards the unfurling of the plot! I was rather young and unclear when I wrote them (one year in school does make you older, laughs). For those who won't read, a point I added was that Parisa was actively participating in her school's astronomy club, and was partnered to a senior there. We'll see how Parisa's interest and that relationship pan out. Oh, and I got the time-line kinda screwed in between my words, so here it is laid bare: Parisa is born 3rd August in 2509, and John is born 17th January 2511. So yeah, since they both join school at around four, Parisa is in her 4th year at school, and is the youngest in class other than John because she was born just before the start of the school year. John on the other hand is in her class after being promoted 2 years, so he is Year 4 even though he had had only 2 years of school. But he is only less than a year and a half away in age from Parisa, therefore their mutual feeling that they are not very included in class (will be touched on) because they are the two youngest kids in class. And, if you did not catch on, Parisa hates swimming and being in water, though she can get on.

Also, in this chapter, a bustle is a bus and shuttle combined (smart coinage eh?). You know where it goes from there. Convologging would be a technology to automatically log discernible conversations in mike range of the Convolog device attached to the ear. Logs up to 5 tracks into text, so users can review workgroup conversations, or in a student's case, project work discussions or a teacher's instructions.

**Chapter 9**

**March Twenty-sixth, Friday, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Swimming pool, ECPEF No. 119.**

_Splash._

It had been getting warmer in the past few days, and that had really helped Parisa loosen up in the water. Parisa dove under the water's surface to gain momentum, then broke through again to the left to receive a pass. Someone, a boy, came charging her, so she had to pass the ball away before she got far.

_Splash!_

"Good shot, Lin!"

The teacher blew the whistle and waved for the ball.

"Well, that's all for water polo, folks! Next module would be handball, and I don't want you wearing trunks and suits for that, though the boys might prefer otherwise." His crusty sun-baked face cracked into a rare smile as the boys moaned in mock protest, playing along with the well-liked Mr Emis.

"So bring your sweatshirts! But for now, play on if you want. The cams will tell me if something is wrong, and I will come running faster than... uh, faster than any of you! Thank you class!"

"Thank you sir," the students chorused raggedly but spritedly, the ones at the end not catching on until the ones nearer had already finished.

"Let's play on, Parisa!" Lin was still exuberant from her goal. _A lucky shot._ Parisa saw how that went in; It wasn't even supposed to go in, only it hit one of the other side's players' shoulder and it bounced the wrong way, into the goal. She went through the motion of lobbing the ball again, arching her arm backwards, then sprung it back as fast as she could. She felt a jab of pain as she overextended to give the ball more speed. It went straight into the unprotected goal.

Parisa stayed in the pool. About half the class had gotten out of the pool, but Parisa chose to continue playing. She was getting good at this. She had probably scored the most for her side in the past few weeks, just that the boys always took the limelight for scoring. For every single point scored, they had to celebrate and discuss the score for a full minute or more. Only when the girls started attacking their goal again did they shut up and play.

Lin, Emily, Sheela and Annabel were still playing for the girl's side; John, Raul, Jamil and Kenji were on the opposing team.

"Get another boy to play! It's not fair for us to win so easily!" Emily taunted as she lobbed the ball at the goal. It hit the crossbar and ricocheted back into her palm. _Was that on purpose?_ Parisa had no doubt otherwise. Emily was the class' resident water polo player. The pool was probably more home to her than anywhere else in school. She also had such a tan that everyone in class called her 'the Indian' from the first day of class, though she was Oriental. _I think._ But it was not hard to guess, as Eridanus II mainly hosted peoples from the East Asian and African continents. For skin colour, it was usually either "you had it" or you didn't.

"You girls better watch out, else you wouldn't even know we scored!" Raul retorted. "Lets go!"

* * *

The girls lost. Only by a point, though. Parisa realised that the only reason she had scored more than the boys was because Emily was always at the back, guarding shots. The boys often got past quite easily and never missed a chance to launch a ball at the goal, but Emily saved them, no matter how ridiculous the angle.

Only when Emily asked for a change, which Parisa took on as a challenge, did she grasp how difficult the position actually was. It seemed easy, almost natural to take an incoming ball and push it away. That was how Parisa had felt, but only until before she was keeper. The first ball thrown at Parisa went in as smoothly as if she had not even been there. She had not anticipated the amount of force needed to push water water and herself upwards. She could not raise her arms up in time to block. It was truly depressing, seeing the first few balls sail past without a single bit of resistance on her part. Only till the fifth ball came flying straight over her did she manage to stop it, at the expense of her index finger ringing out in pain after it poked the ball out of play. Even after that, she could barely brush the ball away with her fingertips. Emily, on the other hand, was right in the mood, and she scored in five minutes what the rest of the team managed to score in fifteen.

John matched up to Emily's every shot, though, and the boys led the scoreboard the other half of the time the girls did not. On the last shot, Raul was right at the scoring line, but John had the ball a few paces back. Parisa heard Raul call for the ball, but John calmly aimed it at the goal. Before he let go, Parisa felt John's intense glare, which still managed to intimidate her even though she had seen it countless times when she played games with him._ It always seemed as though everyone around John was pulling him down. Myself included. _The ball came too fast to react to, and it was past her, swishing into the net.

The bell had rung at the twenty minute mark which signalled half a recess gone.

"Crap," Emily said as she climbed out of the pool. "Gotta run, food's waitin'!" And she ran off faster than anyone else to the canteen.

Parisa saw Lin, who had been marking John, turn to ask him if he were going to the canteen. He shook his head. Lin turned her gaze towards Parisa for an instant, then climbed out of the pool to change. Everyone else did so too, following Emily's lead.

Parisa changed back into her uniform quickly, not wanting to miss John. It was the perfect time to ask, with no one around the pool to be a busybody. _I guess I could always ask him back in class, but... _Parisa hesitated. _If anyone hears that I asked my class partner out, that would be bad. Too bad to think about. Worse than asking my brother to marry... _The last word got caught in her throat. She tried to cough it out. _Definitely worse than marrying my brother. Definitely bad enough. Jesus. _

Class partners were supposed to work best with each other, but somehow keep the most distant. At least that was how school life worked nowadays. _How contradictory. Though, the seniors had their reasons for promoting this culture. Working relationships, they said, should be cultivated between partners, but not love-stuff. All that time in school spent sitting beside each other? You would fail your tests! Badly! So they said. She could not risk asking among so many people. If anyone nearby happens to have their wrist-com's convologging turned on, the whole batch would have a copy of their conversation in no time. Then they'd extract the most out-of-context phrase and use it as evidence against us. _Parisa could imagine her own voice played out on the classroom recorder, "Please, let's go together." _And then everyone would squeal and make a huge fuss about it. And Lin seems to have configured her device to specifically recognize John's voice and priority-record it. Somehow she keeps letting slip so many things about John that I thought only I knew. It could not be anything else other than on purpose. No, better ask him out here at the pool, where there's no one around. _

After hastily stripping off her swimsuit, she rinsed, then towel-dried herself with a few swift swipes on her front and back. She pulled on her underwear before hurriedly buttoning up her shirt and zipping up her skirt, and got out of the showers in time to see John at raised seats packed up and already ready to leave. _Whew. One problem solved. _

"John!" Parisa called and waved.

John slung his clothes and towel over his shoulder and came over with his duffel bag.

"Hey, you free tonight?"

John gave her a squint-eyed look.

"It had better not be using me as a free cookie maker again. Or free anything else for that matter. I'm not going to fall for your 'Oh I just want to learn' excuse again."

Parisa sniggered. She knew John would not be able to resist helping anyway if she asked him again right there and then. He was that type of person who could not leave things undone. Simply say, "In that case, I won't try to make it then," and he would come begging you to allow him to.

But that was not what Parisa had in mind. She wanted to ask him out. _No, it's not what you think it is, or what it would look like,_ Parisa had continuously told herself the past week before she was nearly half convinced, and gathered that she had to ask, now or never.

The Astronomy club – her core participation after-school activity in school, or CPASA, which was how most teachers and students wrote and called it – was organising a trip up to Taraquin, far up North of Elysium city, to see constellations and individual stars better. The air up North would definitely be colder and clearer, and the club was planning to catch the last days of winter for this expedition. Another plus point would be that they would be able to catch the magnetic flares that only happen up North, as well as Earth if they were especially lucky to catch a very cold and cloudless night.

Truthfully, the club had asked for members to bring family members down, but they did not say members could not bring a friend instead, so Parisa decided to skirt the sign-up form in which a line read: Register family member, and put down 'John' in that area.

Parisa explained the trip. It would only be for a night, and they would be back at a good time in the morning, taking a slower train back so that they could sleep on the way.

"Tomorrow is a Saturday too, so tonight would be the perfect day to go on an outing." _Even if I did mention it a little late. _

"So, want to join me? I know you only need yourself to say yes if you want to go."

"How about your brother, then?" John did not seem to have taken the request seriously. He continued packing. _Sigh._

"He is an ass. Brushing his teeth and gelling his hair probably ranks higher on his priorities than going to my funeral. So come on, just come!"

"I wanted to work on a project today, you know."

Parisa was starting to get worried he would not agree to going with her. If so, maybe she could ask one of the girls?

"But I guess that would have to wait."

"Knew you wouldn't be able to resist," Parisa gloated, partly to hide her relief and glee that he took up the offer. Luckily for her, she did not have to use the "But I already signed you up!" card to force his hand. _That would be shameless._ John shrugged nonchalantly.

"How about eight at your house? We'll get a bustle to the train station from there. There's a stop near your house, right? The club got tickets for the nine o'clock train, and we would reach at about midnight, so we can get sleep in between. I think Corin booked cabins with the rotating double beds. That would be fun, eh?"

Parisa breathed in deeply after her explosive explanation.

"Yeah, that should do," John slowly chewed his words over while still studying a breathless Parisa who was grinning widely.

"Yes! See you there then!" She sprung away, but turned round to add, "Oh, and I will be bringing my telescope, so you will carrying that!" John's lips moved in protest, but she did not wait to see it. She ran off with a feeling of satisfaction that was hard to describe, yet so overwhelmingly blinding. Blindingly overwhelming. She almost knocked into a teacher as she ran towards the canteen to buy the best lunch she has had in a long time.

* * *

The club room was quiet when Parisa she entered. There were only a few seniors about, cleaning their gear. That was unusual, but to be expected before any big expeditions. On a regular Friday afternoon, the club room would be awash with activity, with seniors holding lessons on astrophysics or on the geography of space. Otherwise, there would be a run through on stargazing's various techniques. Today, the only person here Parisa knew by name was Corin, sitting in her favourite spot, a plush red sofa by the window overlooking the un-terraformed land their school was built beside. But she was almost always around anyway, and was more like a movable piece of furniture in the room than a member, so she did not count.

"Hey, Parisa!" Corin gestured enthusiastically for her to look at what she had in her hands. Parisa recognized it as one of the things her father had brought back home to demonstrate to her. It was an unfixed polarization film – the type the military used for visor shielding. It could change from one end of polarisation spectrum to the other in under a second. Either a small change in tilt or in charge could completely flip the screen's polarisation. Her father had said it was a real achievement from the scientists, and that was no small praise coming from her father, who regularly worked with top United Nations funded weapon development teams.

"Where on earth did _that_ come from?"

"Trade secret, my dear girl," Corin answered her junior in a mystical tone she reserved just for galling her. Sometimes Parisa thought she would be a good match for her uncle.

"_Wow._ Like I could never guess," Parisa said, drawling out her words and rolling her eyes.

Corin made her 'fu-fu-fuuu' laugh. She was Parisa's mentor-buddy in the club, as well as the vice chairman. _Vice chairwoman._ Though that did sound a little off character, that was what Corin was. This year's Astronomy club's graduating batch member and mentor-buddy to Parisa, club vice chairwoman, secretary to all club members, keeper of the keys, as well as renown joker to her friends.

Parisa was one of the few lucky ones that had a mentor-buddy like Corin. She would have already been lucky to have Corin as a buddy, not to mention as a club mentor-buddy. She had been with Parisa personally for four years, had never missed a call from Parisa, and had club exec comm powers to boot. Most other seniors took two or even three juniors, and only for a couple of years, before they graduated and passed on buddy duties to another senior. Corin took Parisa as a junior just when she became a senior, so she took only one junior. Their senior-junior buddyship had not deteriorated over the years. That was why Parisa dreaded this year's end, when Corin would leave school, and they would split paths. _But for now, enjoy what there is to enjoy._ That her father told her whenever he could.

"Look." Corin tilted it with a minute twist of her wrists, and suddenly Parisa could see through it, though the image was still lined with a slight bluish-green tint. Another small turn of the lens, and the sheet became opaque again. "This is top of the line stuff, Parisa. Not cheap, this."

She then put it under a precision cutter to cut out a piece that fit her telescope's accessory lens holder.

"Well, this lens would be great for tonight if it is cold enough! Imagine the Auroras! I believe they are much prettier than what the holos can show. Photos would also be so much more dynamically saturated with this lens configuration. Good for underwater exploration too, if we have the correct scopes. Add a corrective sight and demagnifier to your astro lens, and there you go, you have made a DIY seascope. Customizable for both aerial and aqueous usage."

Parisa lost Corin when she started on the underwater bit. _Still so much more to learn from her senior.I wonder if I will ever get as good as you at this, Corin. _

"I expect you had a reason for dropping by while everyone else is packing?"

Parisa coughed, and straightened up. _Don't let Corin suspect anything, just say my brother was out, and everyone else could not make it, and..._

"Yeah, of course. Yeah," Parisa blurted out as she saw Corin look right into her, through her. Past her.

"Uh, I was just wondering, if," Parisa could not help averting her gaze, "I could only get a friend to come today, instead of family." Corin had not said anything. "He is my class partner, so that can almost be counted family, right?" Parisa laughed out shortly, and looked down again. She heard a loud guffaw from Corin. Parisa jerked up in astonishment.

"What?" Parisa asked, reprehension crept into the back of her mind for being laughed at by Corin.

"No," Corin said shortly, after recovering from emptying her lungs laughing at Parisa. "Don't get me wrong, Parisa. The Pres' and I _did_ want to get this trip to be a "trap a girlfriend or boyfriend day, just that that snotty Mr Granch would not hear of it. 'Not on my watch', he said. If we went ahead, he swore on his honour that he would have to accompany us on the trip. That, my dear Parisa, is something you should never try, even in the face of death, torture and beyond."

Corin sighed like an old lady remembering age-old regrets. Parisa remembered the rarely-seen teacher-in-charge. Mr Granch looked like a hundred and acted twice that.

"So we _had _changed it to "bring a family member day". Our hand being forced by Mr Granch! What a way to lose an opportunity." Corin shook her head dramatically. Her fringe brushed across her face slowly, swaying left and right, entrancing Parisa.

"That calmed him down a bit, though, and he would stay back here, in school. Though far from our original goals, it is still much better than Grouchy Granch." Corin said, waving away the bad memories of Mr Granch.

"It would have been fun to see everyone bring their _friends_.You know, as seniors, we did want to do _something _for the club. Something big, we thought. Sadly, it did not make it through Granch. But we thought, maybe have a paired outing, just for a change? _That _would really be spicing things up, don't you think? Wanting to know more about our cute juniors notwithstanding." Corin's eyes blazed with passion as she said that. "It would have been nice if more people got the hint. I mean, shouldn't _auroras_, what a beautiful word," Corin's eyes twinkled, "give an inkling to what's up? Seriously, nowadays kids have no sense of romance. All the graduating seniors are bringing their dear bun buns, if you were wondering," Corin said without any hesitation, giving Parisa a small wink.

"Hmm, guess you were the only one smart enough to pick up on the clue. No one has come to me about it, in any case," Corin said, trailing off. "Maybe they would just bring em' anyway, huh. Fill up the form and keep quiet, don't breathe a word, then switch your younger sister for a senior boy."

Though in her case it was the other way round, Parisa began to feel a little guilty lying to a teacher. _Not enough to put off the prospect of sharing a rotating cabin for two, though!_

Corin gave Parisa a look. "I know, don't say it, that came out wrong. Though it actually makes more sense to do that. As long as no one asks the A.I. to check with biometrics, they're safe. Wonder how many would take the small risk, huh?" Corin asked no one in particular.

Parisa wiped her salty palms off her skirt. She only had to mention the word 'family', and Corin could rattle off 'her' life story. Each story was different, but all were equally bombastic in scale. Yet they were told so true that they could not be anything other than convincing. So overwhelmingly true that you had a hard time believing in the shallowness of your own sense of truth. The stories Corin told were undoubtedly lies. You could almost imagine Corin in those intricately detailed shoes, each and every one unquestionably imaginary. It scared Parisa. If Corin could tell stories with such precision to their outcome, making them so believable, yet never failing to hint at their paucity of truth, Parisa could not imagine what would happen if Corin stopped hinting at it. Maybe it had already happened, just that Parisa never realised. _How much do I believe in what Corin tells me about herself anyway? _Parisa would like to think that she reserved her judgement for when it is needed.

_Did other people experience this with Corin?_ She could hide nothing, deliberately or not, from Corin. That was her scary side. She said she was just the average student, achieving regular grades and getting one or two awards a year in one thing or the other. An otherwise perfectly normal student, the records showed. But she had the habit of being all-knowing, almost omniscient. Parisa had never seen her surprised, nor had she ever had the need to be. In her time as Parisa's buddy, she had been the perfect mentor-buddy, like how she would know with uncanny accuracy what Parisa would forget to bring on expeditions like today's, and how she would teach her things she did not even know she would need until a week later, in a competition or Olympiad assignment. _That's Corin. _

She grinned at Parisa.

"If there's nothing else, you'd better get home and pack, and get some sleep. It's going to be a loooong night," Corin winked again.

"And pack some teabags. You won't want to be sleepy later, boyfriend or not. Trust me."

Parisa raised her eyebrows at Corin. Not that Parisa was confident she would not be sleepy when night time came. It was how Corin's simple advice usually turned out to be useful in incredulously warped ways that Parisa had to scratch her head to decipher meaning to the hint.

"I'll go look for my lens protector and I'll go," Parisa said before walking down the stairs to the club's workroom, leaving Corin on the sofa to finish her work on her lens.

By the time Parisa had found her lens protector, Corin had already disappeared from the club room. She may have been in the council room, but Parisa would not know. That was off limits to all but the Year Eights.

She messaged Corin using her wrist-com through the school net, "Talk to you later."

She replied almost instantly, "I'll be too busy. You will be as well."

_Tsk. I know what you mean, but that only applies to you, Corin._

A mental image of Corin laughing as an anonymous boy tickled her sent a shiver down Parisa's spine. _Too scary._

_And now, home, nap, then packing._

* * *

Parisa knew she should not be fussing so much on what she would be bringing, but if she were to bring all that she wanted to, she would not be able to move the sack even with John helping.

Choosing what clothes to pack was a breeze compared to packing equipment. _Weighted tripod, check. Astro-calculation tables and dope, check. Polarised lens, check. Soft toy – what? I hope that was my eyes playing tricks on me. Not Corin. _Parisa could picture Corin's wide, innocent smile as she typed the list down. Whether or not she truly thought a soft toy was necessary was irrelavant. The list looked down at her from her desk, shivering ever so slightly, most probably from silent laughter. The list Corin had compiled was displayed on a vertical light display that her father installed onto her desk last year for her. The display worked by displaying lined lasers, projecting a two dimensional screen into thin air. It was such an expense, sheesh. She told her father not to get it, but he went to install it anyway, saying he forgot she said no, and to treat it like a birthday present. _Really couldn't tell if he forgot. I just told him three days before that. Even a guppy would remember. _Parisa enlarged the screen by a gesture with her fingertips._ But it does come in useful._ Parisa gave a reluctantly approving puff of acknowledgement to her father's decision to install the screen. She could scroll up and down with a wave of her hand while rummaging through the four by four grid of compartments fixed onto the wall. For the highest row, Parisa had to tiptoe on her chair to reach inside. None of them were anything less than fully occupied, and all of them held her equipment, packed tight into their respective categories.

Parisa scrolled down from where she stood to check to see if she saw right. There it was, soft toys listed conspicuously near the end of the list. Right below it was 'boyfriend/girlfriend'. Parisa cringed at Corin's bluntness as though she had been singed by one of Corin's repair lasers.

_Though... _Parisa thought about the bolster she used to hug. The one she had drooled on, strangle choked half the time she slept, wet herself on. _No. Just, no._ She did not spend more time thinking about it.

_That should be about it._ Corin would have anything she had missed out. If it were about stargazing, she would move her whole room for it. Parisa could, from three years worth of excursions with Corin, already picture vividly the scene: Corin with her two main lenses slung over her shoulder like a twin barrelled shotgun, with a bag-pack to rival any survival camper. And her shoes. They single-handedly burned through the layers of embalming that education had wrapped around her eccentricity. They would be the most ridiculous two things in the trip. It could have rained meteoroids, but the thing burned into everyone's memories would be her pair of shoes. And each trip it just got funkier. Parisa both anticipated and dreaded finding out what Corin would be wearing tonight.

_Secretly, every girl admired Corin. At least Parisa thought so. And if not, the truth could not be far off. Corin's fashion was wacky, but what caught people's attention was something else altogether. Her skin was marble smooth and pure white. It was not that she had ghostly pale complexion, no. She looked as healthy as anyone, and probably was actually thrice so. _The most fitting word Parisa could think of to describe her snowy white skin would have had to be 'royal', just as in the old books._ Her hair could also merit blue blooded standards. It fell behind her back like a lazy waterfall, taking its time to flow down Corin's shoulders, glistening languidly in the sun, the silky ebony strands in direct contrast with her skin tone. Corin shone with that combined lustre, though she never did anything to show it. _Instead, Parisa felt that most times Corin tried to hide it. Sometimes, Parisa speculated that all that fashion was just a show to divert people's attention from her ebullient skin, languorous hair and amazing figure._ Come to think of it, she has always worn long, loose pants and long sleeves and a hat or cap whenever I have seen her outside. She wore long socks to compensate having to be seen with a skirt in school, but they were not enough. Just having the fine curves of her calves show through the socks already meant more salivating boys than could have been told off. Whenever with Corin, Parisa always lost count of the number of boys she catches staring._

There was also the matter of this large, conspicuous pair of rectangular glasses with thick obsidian frames which were permanently fitted to her face, obscuring her face. They were the singular thing constant about her, she having worn them since the day Parisa met her. Sadly, the glasses looked, and were, totally irrelevant. Boys still stared, and Corin only looked all the more like a character from the triple zeros. That was eons ago, when people still watched 2-Ds. _Why on Eridanus was Corin still wearing glasses? _Parisa had thought to herself many times. She had asked Corin herself, but as usual, she got the expected enigmatic response. Spectacles had all but disappeared when fully AI operated laser surgeries became mainstream, and the art of eye care perfected. They were practically part of history, only used for quirks. The only glasses worn now were for in-eye lens projections, and those tended to be quite an expensive tool for the slight benefits it gave. Its fragility was known to be top-tier despite best efforts to increases its durability. Though of course, as usual, you could not exactly blame the manufacturers for not being able to make something so exquisite more hardy. It would almost be like defeating the purpose of the glasses' existence. Of course, others would argue too that the glasses' lack of endurance is due to the historically well-used ploy of planned obsolescence. Product designers have to eat too, don't they.

Yet Corin still insisted on wearing them. Not the expensive projection-retaining types, but a pair of moulded concave silicon dioxide pieces that she must have made herself, since they have not been produced for mass use since two hundred years ago. They were now made only by lens hobbyists who most likely were from the Telephoto Camera Society. They were 2-D enthusiasts who abhorred the more recent dimensional light-capture technology which captured everything in an area perfectly. Originally, the argument was about the costs of such technology, but after a few decades and reductions in their costs due to mainstreaming, it gradually evolved into something like "The art of photography has been lost to technology, the challenge being lost, and the meaning and value of good photography perverted", "All the effects added on to the photographs are artificial, just for the sake of pleasing the eye" or even "They spoil the two-dimensional market. Do you want to collapse the profession of photography? To lose one of the few major modern arts that we have been building up since our age of enlightenment?" But Parisa suspected that these were just cover-ups, excuses for the main reason for their fight against improved technology. They were all too embarrassed to tell the truth; that it was nostalgia tugging at their hearts. Old loves live more lifetimes than the number it takes for old habits to die. Compared to the complicated lenses used in cameras, glasses were simple as pie to make, as long as the house had a fabricator.

As for fabricators, even for suburban households in a rim world such as Eridanus, there were few families who did not use fabricators. Even those who did not own one would borrow one regularly from their neighbours. They were too convenient to let go of, resistance from traditionalists or not. It was easy enough to use fabricators, as long as you invested enough time into getting the hang of it, and have some knowledge of material-science knowledge. Other than base element constructor materials and a little technical fabricator manipulation know-how, and where to look for working and crafting tips and templates, basically anything made of simple, common, stable compound materials could be created with little trouble.

So Corin had refused to undergo laser treatment, and instead made her own glasses. They seemed to work surprisingly well on her for something so antiquated. Corin's black rimmed glasses fit her style so well they might as well have been born with her. But no matter how many times Parisa saw them, she could not rid herself of the notion that they were the most eccentric things she had ever seen a person use. Those glasses were often conversation starters among the girls in school.

The boys on the other hand were never bothered for more than a few seconds, and most never missed a chance to stare at Corin through misted eyes._I guess she must be famous with them too. _

Parisa looked to what she would be wearing later. Nothing as fancy as Corin, _but hopefully I won't be a complete wipe-out. _Parisa straightened up with a cough. _What am I thinking. _But the truth was that she had just as meticulously chosen what to wear as she had with selecting and arranging her equipment. And that she did before she went through the packing list. _Not my normal modus operandi, huh. _She dismissed the thought. Did not matter which came first anyway. _Still a change to note. _Parisa sighed at her soldier-minded inner voice.

But her feminine instinct had had her sift through her wardrobe for her best, but she found nothing that _felt_ right. She rarely went shopping for wearables, as what she already had usually worked great anywhere. _Usually. _Today was an exception to the rule. But today was not special, was it? Just another trip up north to see the auroras. Why the fuss then? _How should I describe the situation? _It was more of an anticipation, an expectation; she _wanted_ today to be special.

She went through the clothes on the hangars one by one. _Too bright, this. _Parisa flicked past a bright yellow polo, then a few others, before setting eyes on a black tee. She pulled it out. _Ooh, this one was the one I got from Uncle! _It was a short-sleeved turtle-neck that she got a year back from Uncle Hayato, who said something like, "Give it a few years. You will grow into it" when she first tried it out. It was probably the best for today. Classy but simple. Kneeling, she then drew out a pair of dark pants from the lower drawers to go with it.

_There. All set. Just a quick shower, and off I go. _Parisa rolled sideways onto the floor and stretched like a cat on the parquet.

_I can't wait. _She ended up admitting later on in the shower. She screened this totally random admission through the logical part of her mind, but the conclusion was the same. _I can't wait at all. _And she smiled at her inner voice's confession as she zipped her tee and pants together at the navel. For once, she could totally agree with herself.

* * *

That took a while to get up... Sigh. Exams. And then animu. (Last season was EPIC, and this one is shaping up nicely too). In any case, I was on Wallbase one day (a GREAT wallpaper site, and yes, I was slacking off and not studying) and I saw a few manga and RL pics that kinda' depicted what I have in my head for this lil' story here. They do not correspond to any specific scene (so I say) but I bet _you _can fit them into one. Some say some of these pics are spoilers! Hmph. The audacity. Hope you enjoyed the story. It really took *effort* on my part, and I think this was quite a good chapter. I really tried my best to describe how things would work in schools 500 years from now, which was supremely fun, I tell you. Corrupting traditions and students subcultures, heck yeah. Parisa was also so hypocritical towards Corin too. Though Corin is probably laughing at how this is all unfolding. Again, as I do not know much about girls and yet here I am, writing from the POV of one, please do give comments. Constructive ones are very welcome indeed. Here's hoping you enjoy the pics too /wallpaper/1983172, /wallpaper/1979585, /wallpaper/1985698 (I know this is Yui, but I liked the rural background, quite like the terraformed parts of Eridanus II), /wallpaper/1976106


	11. Milkshaked

**[Edited Dec 29.]**

Yay, another chapter, I say as I waved my hands in the air lifelessly. Onwards.

Ahem (Pause here. Well. How now should I express here my surprise at 'ahem' being a proper English word found in the dictionary? Whew. Only found out when Word did not underline it. What a surprise.): added a _long _passage to chapter 9. I smartly fit it there so as to avoid explaining out of text. Though I must say, I was twice as dumb for not writing it into Chapter 9 in the first place. Stupid me. In other news, other changes around there too. Well! Writing this was fun. Enjoy.

**Chapter 10**

**March Twenty-sixth, Friday, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. On Bustle Service no. 216, on route to Elysium City Station.**

John was looking out the window into the dim city streets, watching cars pass by and overtake the bustle from the side. His finger tapped lightly to a rhythm on the cover of the large paper cup under his left hand, remnants of a large milkshake from Uncle Horrie. They were now passing through the city outskirts, a short detour this Bustle Service had to take before entering the main city centre. Red baubles of light zipped by in pairs, while bright spots of light came towards the bustle, getting larger, and larger, and before the two vehicles crossed, disappeared from each other's line of sight.

Parisa looked intently to her left at John, who had his forehead pressed firmly on the windowpane. He seemed to have lost himself in watching the cityscape, and his unblinking eyes gave no indication that he wanted to turn back to the front. Which Parisa wanted him to do so that she could say something to him. Without being too awkward.

Her wrist-com lit up at her touch. _Eight forty already, and not even in the city centre yet. _They had missed the shift Parisa had planned to take, and had to take the next because John was supposedly preparing something to bring along with him. He would not utter a single hint of what he had brought even though he was indebted to Parisa for being late. Parisa hoped they would make it on time. She bit her lip as she glanced despondently at John again. Her eyes travelled down to the baggage that was leaning against him.

She had already checked her equipment. They were fine, though they seemed to have been knocked hard. _Is it fair for me to remain mad at John when all's good? _Parisa wrinkled her brow. _It's not that I still feel angry. It's just... _Parisa struggled to re-explain the situation to herself. _It's that I just don't want to talk to John right now. _She knew that what she truly wanted deep down was the exact opposite. But she could not open her mouth, could not give John a tiny pat to say sorry, that it was not his fault. Her conflicting desires left a churning pit of unresolved emotions in her stomach. They felt like globules of slime which had gained their own consciousness, trying to set themselves free from what bound them down to Parisa's small chest. Parisa bent low in her seat to hug her knees, relieving some of the knots in her belly. Uncle Horrie's large milkshake, undoubtedly churning somewhere down there, was not helping her.

"Ooohhhh," Parisa moaned tonelessly. Her eyes felt, even to herself, devoid of life as they stared down at the bustle's rubber matting, blinking with her parched eyelids once in a while. She was procrastinating.

_I should have said something immediately, when I could have. _Parisa closed her tired eyes, and played back the scene from forty minutes back.

John had hefted the long piece of baggage, with the end sticking out over his head, and had carelessly run the top half right into the bustle door. Parisa blew up silently, and stared John down for nearly half an hour, refusing to utter a single word when John tried to say something. All this, even though she knew it was her fault for not warning John from behind. He had turned away to immerse himself in the suburban sights, and Parisa gave up, and checked her lenses and scopes to maintain the silence. They were hardier than Parisa had suspected. _That's probably the least important thing to mention now._

_Sigh. _Being unable to say anything was frustrating. She did not look up until the bustle rumbled to a stop at the next station, where the doors opened to let passengers in.

It was Alexander, a grade lower. Over one shoulder he had all his bulky equipment all wrapped up in a long black package, and the other he raised high to wave to Parisa. Only to nearly lose balance when the bustle gave a low growl and started accelerating. He grabbed a nearby rail to steady himself before he gave Parisa a large toothy smile that was unbelievably sparkly. In contrast, his dark skin made his teeth stand out even more.

All seats were filled rapidly by the sudden influx of passengers from the last major stop before the city centre. Alex failed to grab a seat, so he squeezed his way past the forest of rooted passengers standing in the way and found a spot to the left of Parisa's seat to stand. The older girl who followed closely behind him gave Parisa a small wink.

"Oh hey!" Alex set his baggage down vertically and leaned on it. It was nearly as tall as Alex himself. _I would not have believed it if someone told me they would bring more equipment than me. _Parisa usually ended up packing even more than Corin on club excursions. And that was including the spare items juniors would inadvertently and med-aid kit that Corin always brought without fail each trip. And here Alex was. Parisa had lost her claim to the most outfitted club member.

He puffed up his chest, and looked at Parisa expectantly.

"Does your equipment sack want my seat?" she asked drily. She wanted to add a "just kidding" in the same monotone fashion, but Alex reacted faster.

"If you are so kind, my equipment would be forever grateful," he said without any variation to his bright, neutral tone. He blinked his large, sparkling eyes.

Parisa scowled slightly. She could not tell if he was mocking her or being plain obnoxious. That was what irritated her. She had never found Alex to be good company after she first got to know him. The older girl spoke.

"I am sorry, but my little brother can be a little blunt, but believe me, he is a nice little fellow." Alex got a pat on the head. Parisa could almost see Alex's tail wagging as he smiled widely at his sister, who gave him a peck on the cheek. Involuntary distaste for the pair welled up inside Parisa, and it made her heart feel clammy.

"Your brother?" Alex's eyes swept over John for a second.

_Why would you want to know._

"If I say no?" Parisa said as she folded her arms. She looked straight ahead, focusing on the darkened road and the rows of street lamps streaming by through the bus's windscreen. Alex was purposely left in the utmost corner her periphery. Parisa felt John adjust his position. He had retreated from his stake-out by the window to a more conservative spot in the centre-front of his seat. His head rested on the handle-bar attached to the seat in front and his back curved, pulling back his black tee to expose his sun-kissed neck. His eyelids fluttered, and they closed up. _Sleeping?_

"I'm just asking, y'know."

His puffy lips pursed together to form a small pink doughnut that Parisa could not ignore.

"Pfff."

"What!"

The doughnut expanded as he feigned surprise.

"Nothing," Parisa turned the corners of her lips down and shrugged lightly.

He scratched his head, raking his fingers through a mass of wiry black hair. His sister smiled knowingly again, and patted Alex on the shoulder. _Sister who spoils her brother. _Parisa thought of Takuma, and wondered if she was feeling guilt. _Guilt for spoiling him. Hah! _She tugged at her black equipment pack so that it now leaned on her.

"So, that your brother?" Alex jerked a thumb at John, more inspired than ever to find out the truth.

"Yes."

John flashed his eyes at Parisa from where he was hunched.

Alex was not satisfied just yet.

"Your older brother? You two don't really look the same."

A bump on the road made the bus rock forward and back, distracting Alex. Parisa was about to lie again, _appropriate misdirection, in my vocabulary, _but Alex's sister ruffled her brother's hair and told him not to be rude. He made a complaint, but stopped asking questions.

Parisa thought she suddenly felt a connection with Alex's unnamed sister, who looked her in the eye, then at John's hunched figure. He had begun to sleep again.

The two girls shared a smile between them, then looked apart again.

She heard a beep. _Five minutes to nine. _

Parisa peered out at the streets, trying to figure out how near they were to the station. _Shouldn't be far. In any case, the trains really only leave twenty minutes later._

The bustle stopped the moment Parisa turned her eyes away. They had parked in the station.

Standing passengers filed out one by one from the front and back doors before those sitting could exit as well. Parisa shook John awake, who tried making a groggy grab at her equipment but failed to secure it as she snatched the pack out of his hands to carry on her own. _In case he hits it again. _But Parisa knew that would not have happened.

It was finally their turn to get out. The two siblings got off first before Parisa did, with John slouching behind.

They were deposited under the weather-bubble of the Elysium Train Station._ The 'bubble' in 'weather-bubble' was misleading. _The so-called weather-bubble was in fact a large bomb-proof hemisphere made out of transparent carbon fibre. Only a proper nuke would blow through it. Most times the purpose is to keep out unwanted cold or heat at crowded areas, but its even more important role was never really forgotten, even if not overtly publicised. _So much for its pop-able namesake. _Parisa followed the flow of shuffling feet into the crowded station square. With both hands reaching towards the transparent ceilings that the bustle had left them under, John stretched up towards the sky, stars visible past the transparent ceiling. Arching his back, he let out a huge yawn.

Watching John was low on Parisa's priorities, however, so she completely missed the unintended exposé at John's midriffs – the result of a tee getting too small again. A few girls from the club already waiting at the station swooned and tittered audibly, but Parisa ignored this as well. The central figure had her attention.

From a small white portable podium, Corin was conducting the Astronomy Club through the ticketing booths. Some were through already; others were milling before the counters.

_Oh, so it's by level this time. _The Year Twos, Fives and some Sevens were already past the barriers. She could pick out one or two from the various batches to identify the groups already train-side. Some tiny ones were hugging their parents or waving goodbye, so Parisa assumed the Year Ones were not yet through.

Then, of course, there were the Year Fours, her own batch, who she could see were mostly accounted for, Alex's batch, and then the Year Sixes. And then there was Corin and the rest of the Year 8s, busily acting busy around the little podium. Only the chairman remained cool and collected in the midst of all the buzz at the temporary Astrology Club command post. Parisa realised that by settling himself cross-legged on his own beach chair, he had become a counterweight to the commotion generated around him. Corin's quick ticks on her wrist-com, and hurried murmurings among the rest of the Year Seven seniors seemed balanced out by the chairman's lack of action. In fact, all the hubbub seemed to be anchored onto the chairman, and channelled through him as well. Parisa would catch her seniors swipe apprehensive glances at their otherworldly chairman, clad in an undulating yellow-streaked Hawaiian shirt with a Bermuda and sandals. Reassured by his Buddha's posture, they quickly returned to their tasks.

From a distance, Parisa could see the chairman speak to Corin.

"I see Alex, Year Three, and his accomp', Parisa, Year Four, and her comp'," Parisa heard as she got nearer to the dedicated team of Year Eights. How the chairman recognised Alex and Parisa with such ease was a wonder which she was not going to press at the moment.

Parisa smiled awkwardly at the other Year Fours and their company, trying to apologise for being last to get to the station. Some nodded at her and others gave a short wave.

On looking up from her wrist-com, Corin and spotted Parisa. She was not wearing her black rimmed glasses today, for once. Without the black rims to contrast against her sparkling white complexion, her face stood out all the more from her luscious black hair for a background. She still wore pants, but it was black form-revealing leggings that she wore, with a tight white tee to complete the look. Her splendid figure begged attention as Parisa had never seen before, yet she actually managed to look like a normal student this way. _Beautiful._ That struck Parisa as exceedingly unusual. Sure, she knew that Corin's usual garb was fashioned to hide herself, but Parisa would never have thought that plain clothes would make her so much more beautiful. _I'm jealous_, Parisa cared to admit. A wide grin was Corin's greeting. That was one thing that had remained constant. She did not tarry, and with zest said, "Year Fours, pass!"

A senior came over to usher them through the ticketing gates. Parisa tapped her citizen pass on the scanner, and she was through. The words "Group pass ticket redeemed" lit up on her wrist-com. _Corin has outdone herself again. _Usually, group passes were reserved only for trans-planetary tourists. Locals were expected to pay normal, individual fees.

Something bugged Parisa. It was as if she had forgotten something. _So early in the trip? _Corin's grin triggered her memory. _And how could I forget. What is Corin wearing today? _Parisa fumbled with the thought. White tee and black leggings. _Weird. I remember. Even weirder because I could._ Usually it would be a scarlet hair band, or an olive scarf that would demand attention. Or her shoes. _Yes, her shoes. _Nothing had drawn Parisa's attention this year, other than the beauty assiduously gushing from Corin; her subconscious was in agreement that nothing had stuck out like a thorn in Corin's clothing._ Was a plain tee and leggings really it?_

She spun around on her toes and continued on by back-pedalling towards the platform where the others were waiting. Nothing. Not even the shoes. Those were strictly regulation zip-ons. The rest all also passed for a plebeian's clothing. Ironically, typical clothing made Corin stand out even more than normal.

Parisa had to start wrestling with the notion that Corin was for once not being a rebel, convincing herself that what had been to her only a virtual possibility, had now become a reality. _I am not seeing things, _Parisa had to repeat to herself to remain objective. No, she was not deluded, though she would have liked to think she was. Unwillingly, Parisa relinquished the image she had so painstaking carved out from what she believed was Corin's essence. She had failed to see past the red head bands and green scarves that Corin had always worn in front of her. Truly, Corin was dressed perfectly normal this time round, with her tight black pants and cute white tee. And Parisa could feel she was even more comfortable in them than she ever was in her revolutionary outfits. Today she was just a normal girl, albeit an extravagantly pretty one at that.

The Year Ones and the Year Sixes were past the gates, and Alex was tapping his way through. Last were the three Year Eights. They were neither the most amazing nor the coolest people in the school, but Parisa loved them. There were few members who joined the Astronomy Club every year – mainly because it was related to space. That was the last place any thinking parent wanted their children to be in. It was either the military or the odd captain's job for a prospective new employee. If you were lucky. Either lucky way, the mortality rates were literally sky high. So parents try hard to keep their children and their interests away from space as early and as far as they can. The lack of participation in astronomy related sciences in schools followed. Space, parents repeated on refrain, was already old school by the time people landed on Pluto anyway. Many seniors had dropped the club in favour for the global entrance exams as well, so the members who effectively remained in Year Eight were Corin and the chairman, plus one more boy, a serious trekking buff in addition to stargazing. He was regularly on stage being praised for something he had done on the mountains. The chairman himself was not to be outdone. It seem that he had won a few small martial arts competitions as well. _Okay, I take back what I said about neither being best nor coolest, they do meet the mark. That statement probably only applied to Corin after all. But she is cooler than anyone else anyway, that person._

John – _Did I just completely forget him –_ was appraising his surroundings. He looked around and nodded a few times, here and there, like a satisfied boss. _Way to go with dealing with foreign territory. _It was his first time at the Station, he had told her. Parisa in turn surveyed him from head to toe. The milkshake cup was not with him.

She felt a sudden flutter from deep inside her chest. _The cup? _A pang of sadness pinched her in the face, sending a jolt through her heart. _He... he did... _Parisa clasped her hands together and rubbed. They had run cold. _Why...? _That was when she understood she was feeling dejected. About a cup that had no meaning, something she could have gotten free. She rubbed her hands together, feeling her pulse flow through them. _But this cup was different. Why did this one have to go? _Parisa did not trouble her sunken heart for an answer, but realisation, at why it beat, and what it beat for, started to flow through her body like warm ichor, slowly spreading the hot excitement it endowed and cool litheness of being it gifted.

"What happened to the milkshake cup?" Parisa asked with full confidence that she would get the answer she already knew was coming.

John pointed at a bin. _And probably sucked into the main dump already._ Parisa made the extra effort to exaggerate her depressed state though she felt sapped by the answer. He gave her a wide-eyed look, opening his mouth to say something, but Parisa looked away before he spoke. He did not break the silence after that.

Knowing the answer beforehand did nothing to relieve the cut she felt on her heart when he said that. _At least you could have pretended to be sorry, _Parisa sobbed inwardly while feeling she was being hyperbolic and yet very true to herself at the same time. The large cup and straw John had shared with her on the bus was gone. It had been his for one sip, and hers for the other, and the cup was passed back and forth like a precious baby. Every sip tasted like pure heaven to Parisa; better even than the time her father first introduced her to Uncle Horrie's Vanilla Special. The meaning of milkshake had changed for her today, the moment John reached out for her own cup, plucked it out of her fingers, and put the straw in between his rough lips, and sucked up a whole mouthful. He had finished the cup Parisa had gotten him before the bustle even arrived. _And he did that after I stopped talking to him for like, twenty minutes. He has no sense of appropriateness, not at all. _But her cheeks did redden as he passed the cup back to her. Parisa twittered and squirmed at first, but seeing that John had turned away, she hastily took a sip. She thought she could still feel the warmth from his lips on the straw. John turned back, said nothing to a rapidly flustering Parisa, and turned away again, just as passive as before. _He probably thought nothing of it at all. _To a girl, though, it meant a whole world. _At least I got to treasure the moment._

John came up to her, searched her eyes, and took her hands, giving them a tight squeeze. _Surprisingly sensitive for a head case. _She squeezed him back. _When did 'head case' pop up under John's descriptors, sheesh. My brain feels so scattered after all that packing._

"Alright, alright! Astromen, listen up!" the chairman called out to the small groups sprinkled around the platform. Corin and the other boy, _Henderson, I think, _had finally gotten through, packs and all.

The chairman waited for everyone to gather. Parisa, already nearby, could not help by notice once more the ironically garish lack of a sense of outspokenness in Corin's wear. She was dressed so plainly that she could have been missed easily by Parisa if not for the white podium she stood on. This time, she looked amazing. Still geeky, but undeniably pretty at the same time. The way she handled her file – clutching a side and holding it up from the bottom, tucking it at her beside her waist – and the angle at which she stood from the chairman reminded her of someone. _Oh, right. My father's assistant. _

"Let me see, how many of you did not bring family? Raise your hands, please," the chairman said with a small smile.

Slowly raising her hand, Parisa looked around to see her batch mates' reactions. Cheeks reddening, she saw that none of them joined her. This drew eyeballs to herself, as well as to John, who, quickly responding, shot her an indignant glare. She tried her best to look sorry for having missed out telling him this about this minor detail. He was such a stickler for rules. A few others raised their hands, mostly boys, and attention was drawn away from her previously solitary hand in the air.

"Well, those who did, good job." The chairman's lips curled upwards. There was an awkward pause while hands dropped away from the air, unsure if they should have admitted it.

"For those who did not..." Parisa waited for the bombshell to drop, "Even better job done." The chairman did not try to conceal his smile any more. He grinned toothily at the crowd of club members and their companions.

Parisa realised that she had seen the company Henderson brought before. A fit girl with short hair and a stern face, she was usually around at the club on Fridays with Henderson. Parisa had always assumed that she was an inactivated member who just felt like being around. _So that was his... girlfriend? _Not that they were a bad match, though they had always felt more like siblings than anything else.

Her gaze slipped over to the chairman, and to Corin behind him. _They did not bring anyone? _Their partners were nowhere to be seen.

"Well, here's the deal," the chairman started. "Why we could not officially ask you guys to bring your most intimate buddies was because of our dear teacher-in-charge. The Year Ones will tonight be spared from discovering his name. Seriously, you don't have to know. You guys are better off not knowing the abominable old man in charge of this great club. Ah, dang. That's already a hint." He shook his head sadly.

"In any case, this old man told us that if we put anything other than 'family' in the form, he would be coming along to maintain his particular form of 'peace and order'. So of course we could not mention this at all, digitally or not. You know how fast teachers catch wind of the things that go on using their detection systems. A slip from a careless club member could compromise the plan. So we resorted to the last option which was not really an option; that was the only remaining way we could go."

The chairman was gaining speed as he spoke, hammering his fist into the palm of his other hand.

"And so," he paused for dramatic effect, "We covertly opened up a loophole so that the system would not check who was coming, and some of you were able to get your friends along. We three Year Eights knew, so Julio here brought his girlfriend."

"And we brought each other."

It was Corin who spoke the last line. A collective 'oooohhhh' echoed throughout the platform. Heads turned to the group. _It was not the last thing a club member would have expected to hear, if only from another person's mouth, even if from the chairman. But to hear Corin admit being together with the chairman was a different thing altogether. _

"Well. I was planning to tell you guys soon, but since Corin has taken the first step, I must say indeed, we brought each other."

The chatter, having come to a climax at the confessions of their two seniors, ebbed away almost instantly. It seemed as if there was a break in time. The three seniors looked at the juniors, and the juniors blinked back. No one spoke.

"Last chance for boarding. Last chance for boarding," a mechanical female voice boomed from the right somewhere further up near the centre.

The group was jolted to an abrupt start.

"Right-o. Door seventeen, people, door seventeen! Lets go!" And the chairman led the way, with everyone else trailing behind.

_That was drama no one expected. _Parisa could not put her thoughts into comprehensible sentences. Snatches of what the Chairman had said formed only as an image of him speaking, with only a vague understanding of what he meant attached. _What? _What indeed. As for what had just gone down, Parisa had only the fuzziest idea of what to think about it as she passed through the train doors.

* * *

Heya, peeps. Whew. I realise that I have really been taking my time (I would have said taking my words as well if it fit) for this 'arc'. Ah well. A little more detail won't hurt anyone, and this is in the interest of writing anyway. You peeps will know soon enough what is about to blow in a few chapters. So. I have been experimenting with my storytelling lately, and I tried out a few devices here. If you had read carefully (which I don't expect you to be doing for trash like fanfiction, example given above) you must have had a lot of free time on your hands. That was in jest, sorry. I could not help trying to be funny when I can. Wit is on short supply on my end, so I use it whenever I get to. So apologies for that.

Disregarding the above, you may have paid attention to the milkshake cup instead. That was my implementation of Chekov's gun, though I brought it about in a happier manner. Another thing I used was on juxtaposing conflicting ideas from the same source. Something like internal conflict when you refuse to believe what you already saw happen, and try to reconfirm the fact. This implementation is littered across this chapter. How did those techniques go? Pointers for improvement down at the comments would be awesome. If not, till next time.


	12. Tumbling

I hate to use this excuse again, but there really were exams that I had to prepare for. So less time to write again. Though in part it was due to the cool down period I need before I can write again after I finish a chapter.

Oh, and here's another excuse. I have been meticulously combing through all the past chapters to smooth out wrinkles in continuity and extirpate inconsistencies, writing down all the major plot points and facts so that I don't get confused anymore about terminology and events or whatnot, as if I were really writing a long sci-fi novel. Oh wait. In any case, it was a great deal of work, but though I have to say I am sorry about this chapter's inevitable delay, it was worth it in the future as I don't plan on ending this project of mine any time soon. By then, I would have created a world as vivid as any other Halo author. Or most likely not. But one can dream. So go reread the first ten chapters if you have not. I guarantee that the changes are worth your time.

I was also searching for foreshadowing that I either unwittingly penned down or forgot about, idea courtesy of _Bakuman_. I really feel like a manga author right now. Dunno whether that's good or not, though. So please do look forward to what I have in store for the next few chapters. Till then.

**Chapter 11**

**March Twenty-sixth, Friday, 2517**

**Eridanus system. Elysium City, on Eridanus II. Elysium City Station, on board High-speed Rail before departing for Taraquin City Station.**

Parisa climbed into the rotating bunk, then turned herself around to read the instruction notice at the head of the bunk, slowly blinking at its metallic white edges.

"Dear passengers: If you wish to utilise this bunk's rotating function, please strap yourself at a suitable cushioned pocket. When all persons and loose articles in this bunk are strapped in, a 'next' option will appear in hologram option form. The bunk will start spinning. Until the bunk has achieved optimum spin, the straps cannot be released. This process will take 8 seconds. After that, the straps will be disengaged, and passengers are allowed to move freely in the bunk. If you wish to exit temporarily, you may use the spinlock (single person use ONLY). Otherwise, please strap yourself into a pocket to stop the main bunk's spin. While in spin, please stay to the cushioned third of the bunk only, or the AI intendant may stop the spin to enforce safety."

Below there was a warning in capital letters, saying "PLEASE REFRAIN FROM USING IF YOU HAVE GYRO-RELATED MALADIES", and in another line below, "This bunk is certified under the Ecological Protection Act."

The bunk specifications were given below: ETT-B20: 2 pax. Energy usage: 8.96 kilowatts. AI-controlled system by Alcott Tech. The rest were a jumble of technical readings that Parisa could make sense of no more than her brother's textbooks.

John clambered in from behind, and put his bag in a cusp. The telescopes he had come to carry again were tied down to the non-cushioned side of the bunk.

As far as Parisa knew, these bunks functioned by spinning fast enough to generate a variable amount of g-force that passengers could adjust while being spun together with the bunk. The spin would be in sync with the acceleration and deceleration of the train, so that passengers would not feel it, as the spin generated by the bunk would automatically cancel out those forces. Basically, passengers could attain a small bit of heaven in these rotating bunks. Setting the spin to low gee guaranteed a good sleep on the train, or a good nap at the very least.

_How in the world did Corin get these bunks down to a price by which the school could pay us? _It was puzzling. These bunks, especially these exclusive double-bunks, were top of the line. They may be labelled "bunks", but a three-hour trip could cost as much as a lift up to the orbiting space station. In Parisa's eyes these bunks were a luxuriously misguided way to spend money. Only one could wonder what Corin did to get the round-trip tickets. They were to use the same bunks when they came back.

Parisa crawled inwards into the bunk, creating space for John to sit. The cushioned third of the cylindrical bunk was more than enough for them to lie side by side, and barely enough to lie in a line. That would not be comfortable though, as they would have to be lying head to head, with feet pushing against the bunk wall, or they would have to be curled up, unable to stretch.

John stretched out his body to read the bunk's classy header, and strapped himself in before long. Parisa automatically did the same.

_Rotate. Gyrate. Circulate. _The words scratched at her sternum, simulating the g-forces that the bunk could produce. She shifted her spine uncomfortably in the cushion, trying to loosen some of the straps so that her skin could breathe, but she was held down tight. The straps held her down fast.

John's palm hovered precariously near the holographic "next" option which had floated up as Parisa tied herself to the bunk. Tentatively, the three-dimensional button was approached by John's steady palm, ready to swipe it to the side to start the spin cycle.

_Roll. Whirl. Spiral. _The thought of spinning round and round focused and refocused in Parisa's envisioned future. There, space and time suddenly cracked, and all was a mess. Equipment strewn everywhere in the bunk, broken lenses and scopes in between cushion seams, bags torn open, spewing out its contents. The scene was black. And John, he was at the end of the bunk, cut, bleeding, slumped, crushed, dead–

"John-"

He retracted his palm and glanced over.

Parisa caught her breath. _Kowai. _The Japanese word for 'scary' came to her. She realised she had never tried gyro bunks before. Her heart was pounding, and her palms and feet were cold from nervous sweat. She slid her hands under her tee and rubbed the icy perspiration off her midriff, trading it for the warmth stashed under her black tee. The stolen warmth quickly evaporated from the back of her hands when she retrieved them from the heat exchange, but her cold hands left a permeating chill on her abdomen.

"Oh, are you gyrophobic?"

_Was I? _No, she was not. Parisa had been tested negative, said her mother, when she was younger. Too young to remember the test. She had been told she had not been the least fazed by the experience. "Perfect material for a fighter pilot. Your father would recruit you the moment you turn fifteen," her mother had said when she asked the day before, wondering if she could use the gyro bunks.

"No,"

John's hand had crept back into position to confirm the spin cycle's start.

"But you could have asked."

The perfectly pitched automated female AI voice announcing the very obvious "spin starting" drowned out Parisa's mumblings from her corner as the voice rang out solidly in the small confines of the room.

She could feel the bunk moving. It had suddenly become silent. Before the spin, Parisa could hear the low rumble of the train speeding through the air from her side. But it was almost completely muffled once the spin commenced. There was a strong tug from under the cushion, and momentarily she was stuck. Then her left arm swung out to the left before being pulled onto the cushion as well. After that there were a few more minor tugs to her left and right, and soon, nothing.

Strapped down onto the soft, form-fitting foam cushion bunk wall, Parisa and John were less than half an arm's length apart. She could picture her heart fluttering like a butterfly in the wind. Her heart was that close to betraying her body, making an escape, flying off and away.

They certainly had been physically much closer than this before, but that had been in class, where it was all about project work, then sports, then about outwitting the other for more elbow space on their combined desk. Parisa would take the chance to press herself close onto John over his broad shoulders to see what he was doing on his desk just to spite him. She had never had any problems with her work, and neither did John, but it had become her hobby to point out mistakes in John's work whenever she could find them, and give him a wide-eyed stare, saying "well, that's a mistake _I _would never have made" when he glared at her. He had taken to tweaking his desk projector's algorithms so that they warned him when Parisa, and specifically only Parisa, was close, so that he could blur his work so that she would not be able to see what he was working on. It hurt a little, but it made Parisa feel special as well, so it was a fair exchange.

Now that they were together in small, enclosed chamber, alone and nowhere near their sullen school and strict teachers, lying side by side on a bed of cushions, in their best clothes, nothing was the same as in class. The circumstance could not have been more different. If this rarer than rare setup was not invitation to feel more intimate than usual, what else would count as an opportunity? _I really should keep in mind that this situation was manufactured by Corin though._

Parisa's chest expanded as she breathed in deep, and deflated when she exhaled, flattening her back against the same cushions John was lying on.

The almost silent whirl of the spinning bunk made Parisa feel as if nothing could disturb them. She rolled onto her side. John had his eyes closed.

Parisa feasted her eyes on the boy right by her side. She could not ask for more. Having him any nearer and her heart would be set ablaze.

He opened his eyes, as if he had felt her stare on him.

"You should sleep, Parisa."

She felt indignant that she had to be told off by someone younger than her.

"You sleep first. I'm older, so I need less sleep than you. Growing boy." Parisa mimicked what her brother always said to her. That was scientifically disproved ages ago, but many adults still chose to use it as an excuse to force their children to go to bed.

Parisa had expected a response, but John simply closed his eyes. Unwilling to let the conversation fail after two lines, she blurted out, "Don't you think that sleeping later makes you feel older? If I slept later than my parents did, I'd feel like I'm old enough to do anything."

"Do you also feel older when you wake up tired too then? Bet you do."

The response she got left her nonplussed. He still had not opened his eyes, hiding the eyes Parisa wanted very much to see.

"I don't wake up tired." That was her right brain, willfully ignoring the truth. She always woke up late, _and_ tired, on nearly all Saturdays and Sundays.

John grunted and was quiet.

Parisa checked the clock. Another two hours before they reached Taraquin. She had to admit, she _was _somewhat tired out by all the commotion at the station. They had almost been unable to board, as someone was in the toilet, and the doors closed before he got out. Luckily a station master was at hand to help. He was a big man, but he had somehow appeared out of nowhere to get the doors to open another few more minutes.

John was breathing deep in the time Parisa took to pull out her jacket from her backpack. _It would be cold in Taraquin, _Corin had warned, and her warnings were taken seriously. The last time she warned of rain, it had showered, thundered, and blown hard before the club could have their clear sky. Parisa wondered what they would have to brave to see the stars in the Northern hemisphere this time.

She sat up to tie it around her waist. It was a plain back one. She did not care for showy, brightly coloured things. A little was fine, maybe lining the strap of her bag, or at the tips of her hairband. That was classy, refined. A wash of colour was not; that would blind anyone looking. She did not like to blind people.

Parisa lay back down, folding her arms. She looked up at the curve of the bunk leading all the way back to where she was, and up again.

_Rolling, rolling, rolling. _Soon her eyes were rolling in darkness as well.

* * *

"Is this the one?"

"No no no, dig deeper."

A rustling sound came from the right of Parisa. It was dark, she sensed from under her eyelids. _Maybe John turned the lights off?_

Parisa pinched her eyes tightly together and tried to stretch, first her arms, then her legs, but her lower body mysteriously refused to budge. It seemed like they were being held down by something.

Only on opening her eyes did she awaken fully. A shadow hung over her, shielding her from the light still prominent at the edges of the black shirt that was spread out above her.

"That one, yes that one."

John extracted a cute owl plush toy and handed it over to Corin, sitting at the edge of the bunk, for further inspection.

John remained where he was, on top of Parisa's thighs. She promptly pushed him off to the side, reddening slightly at the ears. The place where he had sat was still numb from having its blood supply cut off. _Did he _have _to sit on me to get what he needed?_

"Oh hoo, I see our princess is awake."

"Why are you here?"

"To check on my precious princess of course."

Parisa scowled her disapproval.

"We're reaching in five minutes, so I thought I would come get you to wake up. Auroras, remember?"

Parisa let herself fall back onto the cushions.

"Got it already, now go away."

Corin did her "fu-fu-fuuu" laugh.

"I'll leave you two at it," she said she opened up the bunk door. Parisa realised that the bunk had already stopped spinning. Corin winked before she climbed out into the aisle.

John was leaning at the side, watching Parisa zip up her equipment bag. She glared at him, and gave him another shove as she went for the exit.

"Why not wait a moment more?" John said.

Parisa stared daggers at John.

"Corin still has my Fukurou-san."

Not waiting for a reply, she left John by himself to recall that it was _he _was to blame for surrendering her dear Mr Owl to her blasted senior buddy and vice chairwoman.

* * *

"Oh," Corin made a surprised sound that was one mark off genuine. "So you do have a heart."

"Don't tell me what I have meant to you all these years. I'd rather not know."

Parisa had caught up to Corin as the club gathered at the entrance of the station. Cold air blew in as the few passengers left on the train got out with them and exited briskly into the cold night. Taraquin was the last stop on the magnetic rail service. Few colonists would choose to live in northern cities because of the constant cold, so even on the trans-continental lines, like the one they took from Elysium, the crowd would have thinned by the time the train reached this stop, so far to the north. Besides, it was already now past midnight.

"And here I thought that you already knew. How would I describe this attitude of yours? Sometimes you are so direct that I wonder how John even-"

"Where have you put my soft toy?" Parisa said, cutting Corin off.

"It's with the chairman now."

Parisa was going to stalk off to find the chairman in the crowd when Corin called out to her, "I am guessing you ignored my message to you again? I feel hurt. After all that effort sending you people personal messages to tell you specific information."

The way the edges of Corin's eyes seemed to dip downwards did seem to show a tinge of disappointment in them, and it made Parisa feel bad enough to check her wrist-com for the message from Corin she must have missed.

Projecting from the bulb of the wrist-com onto Parisa's forearm, it read: "To Parisa. You want to know why soft toy? I know you do. You are one of those people who cannot just trust anything anyone else tells you until you have enough reason to. I won't make you ask. For the rest of the trip I would have to hide from your temper otherwise. We are having a little competition that involves your soft toys. That's all I can tell you for now, else you'd get to prepare. That's a clue too, so don't say I didn't tell you enough to convince the skeptic in you. Don't worry too much. The Year Eights will take every precaution to safeguard your soft toy and everyone else's. Though I know you probably won't read this until I tell you to," Parisa's lips tightened as she read on, "since you have your John by your side today. Well, no matter. So long as you don't get mad at me for something _you _didn't do."

Parisa closed the message, aware of Corin's eyes searching hers.

"I got it already, okay?"

Corin broke into a grin and gave a short wave as she bounced away.

"See, you didn't get it back."

Even an idiot would be able to see that.

"So?" Parisa shot back haughtily, grinding her incisors as her lips curled backwards.

"You didn't even get to the point of asking your senior what the game was about?"

"What? Did you?"

John made an effort to look disappointed at Parisa asking.

"An _idiot_ would have."

Parisa felt a bitter lump forming in her throat, but she had no choice but to persist in her questions, even if she had to choke on herself to do so. John rarely said anything he was not asked, even if continuity was glaringly obvious. She knew he would not say another word about what he learned from Corin if she did not make it a point to ask him outright. He completely lacked the itch that every normal person had to talk about _things_. Sometimes Parisa suspected he made it a point to keep what he knew as far from her as possible.

"John. What was it about."

"You want to guess?"

"No."

John kept silent, scanning the closed shutters that fell from their myriad outlet banners. Parisa knew that somehow he had redirected his attention away from their conversation. Typical of John to do so when he did not want to talk. But this time, Parisa would not give him the easy way out.

"John."

"Hmm?"

"Tell me about what the game was about."

"Guess."

Parisa thought for a while. _What did Corin like?_

"Hide and seek."

John blinked.

"I didn't say you only have one try."

Parisa blinked as well.

"So am I right?"

"You got it. The gist of it, at least."

"Details."

John grimaced and looked out the station through a plexiglass window.

"One. Hide toys. Two. Find toys. And your senior said that only couples can find the toy. Somehow. Don't know how."

Parisa wanted to say that she had a clue, but the chairman's voice came booming across the empty station, cutting through the chatter instantly.

"Transport's here! Into the bus bay, everyone!"

The scattered groups tightened together in a wave which exited the station, crossed the bus bay and got into the bustle in one expedite motion. Nobody lagged behind.

Corin came up last and punched in the coordinates into the driving system, gave a whoop, and they were off.

* * *

I actually intended this chapter to be longer, but since this was languishing far down on my to-do list, I cut it so this this could be pushed out for reading. Hope you liked it.


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